


The Sulphur on Your Sleeve

by Loracine



Category: Dark Angel, Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Bonding, Gen, transgenic!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 10:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7754671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loracine/pseuds/Loracine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam made a terrible mistake. Driven by his profound grief over his brother's betrayal of his body, his mind, and his free will; he said something stupid, something unforgivable. Not directly, but he implied that he didn't want to be brothers anymore and he didn't take it back. In that moment, he'd wanted Dean to hurt. He succeeded and Dean disappeared. Five years later find the brothers divided and hurting. Sam is swimming in guilt and still searching for his brother and Dean has been caught in the clutches of Manticore all these years. This is the story of how they found each other again.</p><p>'…you cannot shake hands with the Devil and not get sulphur on your sleeve.'<br/>– Nancy A. Collins<br/>My Name is Red</p><p>'Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you – that is what has distressed me.'<br/>– Friedrich Nietzsche<br/>Beyond Good and Evil</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Primer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Amberdreams](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams) did an awesome job on the artwork. I am partial to the first piece she completed, where Dean is floating with his hands chained. It was my favorite scene to write. What she did with the banner, though, was inspired.
> 
> Seriously, go visit her [Art Master Post](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html) and tell her all about it.
> 
> Also, give a little love to my beta [gatorgurl94](http://archiveofourown.org/users/gatorgurl94/pseuds/gatorgurl94/works) for putting up with my crap. Without her help this fic would probably never have gotten done.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

This fic is sort of half fusion and half crossover. I made alterations to both worlds in order to melt their eccentricities together as seamlessly as I could manage. So buckle up and I'll do my best to get you oriented.

Most of the characters you will come across are from Supernatural. Dean's backstory has been altered a bit, but I have not changed his basic character. He's still the same rough and tumble man-whore we know and love. All canon up to Supernatural S9E12 Sharp Teeth and Dark Angel S1E1 Pilot are relevant. Any changes I have made will be revealed through the course of the fic. I won't leave you hanging or wondering unless I have to for the sake of plot. I have changed as little as canon possible before those two episodes and no changes have been made to Sam or his backstory. He still grew up rough on the road, left for Stanford, was dragged back into the family business by an overprotective big brother, and watched the love of his life burn on the ceiling. Likewise with Bobby and almost every other minor character in the series. I have made a few small changes to John due to his close association with Dean as he was growing up, but I believe that nothing I have changed will result in an alteration of his basic personality, motivations, or the major events in his life.

The biggest Dark Angel contribution to this fic is the X Series transgenics, trained from birth as soldiers. Created at Manticore by mixing human DNA with various strands of animal genetic code, they are faster, stronger, tougher, and smarter than your average homo sapien. There were quite a few mistakes in the initial attempts, think animal people, and the more unusually appearing experimental models in the later batches were done purposefully for various advantageous reasons (i.e. lizard skin doesn't lose water or burn in the desert sand as easily). The show does a good job of describing these people, so I won't go any further.

Max and her X-5 unit escaped from Manticore on schedule in 2009 just before the Pulse hit and are ignorant of the supernatural world. The Pulse was a product of Lucifer's rage, released when he crawled out of the Cage and did not find his perfect vessel there waiting for him. It devastated the American economy.

As for the Angels and the Demons, Sam completed the trials, but he barely survived. All of the demons and other denizens of Hell were sucked back into the underworld and locked in. Nothing has been heard on that front since. With the crossroads demons unavailable, Dean still made a deal with Gadreel, who he thought was Ezekiel, to save his brother's life. The spell that Metatron completed with Cas' grace locked all the Angels out of Heaven, even Metatron. In a few short years their remaining grace had been used up. Many chose death over suffering life as a human, powerless and vulnerable to pain. Gadreel quickly lost the ability to suppress Sam's consciousness as his grace dwindled, used up in the process of healing the younger Winchester, and on 28 January 2014 the angel was ejected by Sam himself without assistance. Later Sam says a few choice words that feel justified at the time, but sound harsher than he intended. Dean takes off, but does not take on the Mark of Cain. I take a hard right from Supernatural canon at this point, deviating from the path established by the show's writers. Metatron didn’t devise a spell to get back upstairs before Sam and Cas hunted him down and killed him for his treachery. Cas has not been heard from since.

I am aware that there are Dark Angel books currently in print that extend canon beyond the show. However, I have not read them yet. My canon knowledge for Dark Angel is limited to the two TV seasons that aired, and the Wikia page for those episodes. Likewise, for the Supernatural novels. Anything else about both worlds that I mention is pure extrapolation or imagination on my part. If I got anything wrong, well, smushing the canon material from two shows together necessitates a few alterations. I tried to mention everything that I changed, but stuff happens.

If you need a refresher course on Supernatural canon, the wikia is very informative and can be found [HERE](http://supernatural.wikia.com/wiki/Supernatural_Wiki). I did a lot of my fact checking there.

The Dark Angel wikia can be helpful as well and if you need a few reminders, it can be found [HERE](http://darkangel.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Angel_Wiki).

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)


	2. Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Considering what day is it, I figured someone needed to check in on your stubborn ass," she explained.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun factoid, my sister's first word was 'telephone', with perfect frickin' enunciation. Show off. Mine was some garbled derivation of dada, I've been told. I guess the sibling rivalry starts young. Gene Frehley refers to their aliases on Supernatural S1E14 Nightmare.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

January 14th, 1979

This project of his had taken on a life of its own. The idea had been banging around in Doctor Sandeman's head for some time, back then it had been nothing more than a genetic concept scribbled into a bunch of beat-up composition notebooks, a pipe dream. He was extremely proud he had managed in just a few short years to turn it into a full-fledged project. Subject forty-two's birth was in progress and was about to take its very first breath. After the last several dozen dead babies, he'd take breathing as a win. He pressed his hands to the glass separating the observation room from the operating theater with trepidation. So much was riding on this one. Manticore was losing its patience as he was forced to report failure after failure. The project was currently located on the third floor of a clinic with no name owned by a corporation that didn't actually exist, not on paper anyway. Obfuscation like that cost money, money he didn't have. He tried very hard not to dig into the specifics of exactly who he'd climbed into bed with he couldn't bring himself to regret any of it as he watched the proceedings with barely restrained glee. He had a good feeling about this one. The ultrasounds had consistently shown a normal fetus.

The woman on the birthing bed was screaming, straining, drenched in sweat, and her voice was cracking as she pleading for the pain to end. The fact that he had been forced to utilize human surrogates for the gestational period was one of Sandeman's greatest regrets. The method was imprecise, largely due to the unavoidable differences inherent in biological systems. To make matter worse, many of the women failed to follow protocol and physician instructions. One had even stopped taking her prenatal vitamins for a two-week span before her monitor had noticed and he'd been forced to sneak the crushed pills into her food until she had acquiesced. This particular surrogate had been one of the better ones. She had submitted to all of the required tests and necessary medical care, but in the thick of it, her body suffering the agony of labor, she no longer gave a damn. She wasn't thinking about the project or the money or the agreement she had signed. She was exhausted and screaming for the good drugs, even though her contract specifically forbade their use. This late in delivery they would be a real threat to the safety of the child, the only concern of this entire venture.

There was also the small issue of attachment. The women that had been more diligent in their adherence to prenatal care also tended to display a reluctance to relinquish their charge. This one was no different. She'd been well compensated for the use of her body, but at some point in the middle of all of this, the woman had developed feelings for the life growing inside of her. In the middle of an exceptionally strong contraction she demanded, at the top of her lungs, that she was going to keep the baby, HER baby. As if it bore any genetic resemblance to herself. As if it was human. The animal DNA he had incorporated often manifested with scales, claws, pointed ears, slitted pupils, and even tails. Sandeman had seen all manner of unintended abnormalities, but not one subject contained genetic material taken from any surrogate. The donors had been carefully chosen long before he had considered how to bring his creations to life. No matter what happened she had no claim to it.

Sandeman watched as another contraction seized her mid-section and as soon as it was over she was back to screaming her head off, ignoring all attempts to pacify her. It was a wonder where she got the strength to keep it up. Maternal instinct must have played a part in her stamina, but the sentiment was misplaced and, judging by the desperation in her voice, she knew it too. Sandeman tapped on the glass to get the staff's attention.

The obstetrician rolled his eyes, certain she had no idea what was coming out of her own mouth, and called for the anesthetist. The team then proceeded to make her loopy enough to shut the hell up, barely able to lift her head from the pillow, but not so doped up that she couldn't follow the staff's directions to push when the time came. At least, that was the working theory."We got another screamer, eh," the nurse chuckled as she strapped down the woman's suddenly limp appendages. Her face was kind, though, as she took the laboring woman's hand in both of hers.

The obstetrician rolled his eyes in feigned exasperation. "Just keep it down up there," he griped, relieved the noise level had gone down.

Several hours later, the doctor was lifting a red-faced squalling babe for Sandeman to see through the glass. It was a little boy and he outwardly appeared to be completely human, shriveled pink skin and all his fingers and toes. Unlike the others, this babe didn't look like a monster and he could tell the doctor was hoping this one would survive the inspection team. The man was still clinging to the Hippocratic Oath, by the tips of his fingernails.

The nurse leaned over the surrogate's leg and tickled one tiny foot. "He's just adorable," she cooed as the little boy wiggled.

The obstetrician shook his head. "Sandeman will be pleased," he replied. This child was a sign of progress. Manticore needed monsters that mimicked human, at least on the outside, not the freak shows and mutated failures that dominated the surviving infants from the past few weeks. For many of them, euthanasia had been a blessing. In the beginning, it had been difficult for them all not to mourn each small squirming infant that failed inspection, as the hack jobs from downstairs took possession of the bodies and rushed them to the lab for dissection.

When the last clip was placed on the umbilical cord, number forty-two was passed over to the inspection team waiting by the door. "So, we got a keeper, Eckard," the doctor asked of the inspector. The tension in the room was palpable as they waited for his judgment.

The man looked up from his clipboard, sniffed, and buried his nose back into the form he was filling out. He didn't look happy. He didn't look upset either, but then again. The man would make a damn good poker player. The entire room held its breath while he looked the child over and then finally announced, "Defective." For a brief moment, the inspector actually looked apologetic.

Sandeman was furious. He stormed into the theater, too-big lab coat flapping about his wiry frame as he gesticulated wildly. "What's the matter with this one," he demanded, marching up to the inspector and snatching the clipboard out of his hands. "Just look at him," he insisted.

The inspector gestured with his pen and the subject was turned over. He sniffed again and pointed to the unblemished skin on the back of the little boy's tiny neck. "Doctor Sandeman, it has no barcode," he explained reasonably. "Manticore requires a definitive method of identification." He signed the completed form and passed the clipboard to the obstetrician for his signature on the secondary line, the slot intended for little more than a witness. T's crossed. I's dotted.

Sandeman wanted to smack the guy. "Then I need to determine what went wrong," he replied. If they'd let him keep at least one infant he would already have come up with a better idea of what had gone wrong with the genetic cocktails he had used. He had to know what had gone right with this boy.

The nurses packed the squirming form into a bassinet for transport, ignoring the discussion between the two men. "Samples will be taken and a full report will arrive on your desk by the end of the day," the inspector informed him, making it clear that he intended to leave their discussion there. At that, he turned on his heels and his clicking steps lead the way out of the room.

"Wait," Sandeman cried, arm outstretched.

The nurses paused just outside the door, unsure whose order to follow. The inspector turned to face him. "Yes, Doctor," he asked, eyebrows raised.

He put a restraining hand on the cart. "I will handle this one," he insisted. He was more than qualified, after all. "Your examiners are not always the most thorough and, though they generally do an acceptable job, I need to know exactly what went awry with this individual. I was so close to a breakthrough with this one," he explained. He was crossing his fingers as he watched the man decide.

The inspector nodded, "Very well. I will inform the Colonel," and gestured for the nurses to leave the bassinet where it had stalled in the hallway.

Sandeman looked curiously down at X1-042 and said, "Well then, let's get you back to my lab. Shall we?"

The infant wiggled again, myopic vision tracking the massive blurry blob above him. It would take him over forty years to find out exactly how close he had come to death mere moments from the womb.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

January 24th, 2019

The ancient looking phone on the big table was making a god-awful racket. Sam scratched at the week-old stubble on his face and looked at the thing dubiously until it stopped ringing. No one had that number. Not even Sam had that number. When it didn't blow up he sighed in relief. You never knew what would happen in the bunker. One time he had turned on a perfectly innocuous-looking lamp and had spent three days killing the demented little rat-bugs that had crawled out of the bulbs when they lit up. He was still trying to figure out what idiot had thought to put a cursed object sitting out in the open like that with no sign attached reading 'WARNING: This lamp will produce a hoard of poisonous rat-bugs if turned on.' Yeah, that would have been handy. Instead, like everything else in this giant hex box, he had found out the hard way. The lamp, by the way, was currently locked in the storage room with said sign firmly attached and copious notes that had been added to the ledger just in case.

For a long time, he had dedicated his free time between hunts, what little there had been, to fixing the place up. He had converted a good chunk of the items ledger into a searchable database. He had been rather proud of his accomplishment. It had made finding random crap in this place so much easier. So much so that he had started adding his case reports in a separate section, tagged with keywords and cross-referencing to relevant materials in the library. Charlie had taken one look at his little database and made an entire internal bunker network, completely cut off from the outside world because of some weird trick of the wards that he was still trying to replicate. The network had been running for almost two years now and the sheer volume of information on the server was daunting. The server itself, along with the router and a couple other little black electronic boxes whose purpose he only partially understood, was located in a converted janitor's closet off the main war room. Charlie had said something about honoring customs when she had placed it there and Sam hadn't cared where she put it as long as he could find it when he needed to. He had turned off that server about a half hour ago. The little blinking lights had winked out as soon as he'd pulled the plug. It was the last piece of himself left in this old place. His duffel was already packed and in the car.

The phone on the big table started ringing again. He picked it up. "Hello?"

Charlie's voice crackled through the connection, "Sam! What's up, bitch?"

Sam winced and took a deep shuddering breath. "Just finishing packing up, Charlie. Is something wrong," he added. His cell phone was sitting at the other end of the table and hadn't made a peep since he'd gotten here.

"Considering what day is it, I figured someone needed to check in on your stubborn ass," she explained.

Sam huffed. "I'm fine. Why didn't you call me on my cell? And how'd you get this number," he quickly added that last part. Yep, that one would be good to know, even though he wasn't planning on coming back.

"Your cell is dead, genius," Charlie snarked. He picked it up and confirmed that, yes, the screen was definitely blank and unresponsive. Dammit. "As for the other thing, the reigning Queen of Moondoor can't give away all her secrets. So, do you want to try that last one again?"

"I told you, I'm fine," he insisted and glanced at the wall calendar he had hung barely a month ago. "I know. It's the twenty-fourth. This is never going to get any easier, but I think getting out of the bunker for a bit might help." It had been five years, five long years since he had, still mentally reeling from the violation of his body and free will that had been done at the request of his own brother, said something he would always regret. He had meant it at the time, in a way, and he was pretty sure he wouldn't have been able to say anything else. But, his remonstration hadn't come out quite right. He had been too angry, and looking back on it now he saw how final they had been, what it must have sounded like to Dean. Not brothers. He hadn't meant to cut all ties with Dean that day, but he had. He had felt justified at the time, all puffed up and pissed off, but he wished he had possessed the presence of mind to fix it as soon as that poison had left his mouth. By the time he had come back to his sense, none of his brother's phones were working. He made a soft sound of pain.

"Sam," Charlie prodded. She sounded a little worried. "This is a big change."

He sniffed. He wasn't crying. There was just too much dust in this old place. "I'm fine," he repeated. He was thirty-five years old. He could handle a little move.

"You know where you're going," she asked, changing the subject.

Sam squinted and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I was thinking Bobby's place. I could fix it up, settle down somewhere more accessible," he said. He truly hadn't thought further than leaving, but Bobby's junkyard had just popped into his head and it sounded as good a place as any. "I'll call you when I get there," he offered.

"Listen, I know a guy," she began.

Sam snort laughed, "That sounds like the start to a bad idea."

"I know you gave up looking for him," she said. There had been too many failures, too many dead ends to keep him going. His enthusiasm had waned and, to his shame, he eventually stopped searching entirely.

"Woah woah woah. You want to start looking for Dean again," he asked. "We've been over this. He left, I didn't. Dean could have found me at any time." Oh denial, what a wonderful place to live.

"Oh, honey. Could he? His entire life has been about taking care of you and now he thinks you're better off without him. I know that's not how you meant it, but, face it, Dean-bear already believed it. He just needed a little nudge to make the idea stick," Charlie replied. "I miss him too," she added quietly.

The conversation ended on an uncertain note. Sam promised not to interfere with Charlie's search for Dean and Charlie promised not to involve him until he was ready. A couple years ago he would have jumped right in. That first year he had barely slept. He hardly ever saw the bunker, much less his own bed, for more than a day or two before he was rushing off on another hot lead that ended up going nowhere. Barely eating. Barely sleeping. He would go days without so much as looking at another human being. All his tanks had been running on empty, sucking fumes, and it had worn him down eventually. He might have died from sheer exhaustion if something else hadn't taken him out first. He'd gotten sloppy, almost suicidal. He found it almost comical that it was the smallest of life forms, barely a life form, that saved him in the process of trying to kill him. A nasty case of viral pneumonia put him down and kept him in bed for weeks. He woke up in the hospital on a respirator with a recently humanized Castiel glaring at him, clearly upset that he had allowed his body to become so weak. At the time, Sam hadn't been entirely sure he wanted to recover. Dean had dropped off the map, winked out of existence, and was obviously dodging Sam. Not even Crowley could find him, not without the powers of Hell to back him. The newly minted slopsucker of a human being had earnestly tried, but in the end, he had been of no help. Sam couldn't go through that again, all that glittering false hope followed by the inevitable crushing disappointment of failure. Sam wouldn't survive that again, not intact. Not without Dean to pull him through. Despite everything he had ever said, the two of them were only ever whole together.

With a little twinge of sadness, but no regret, Sam finished closing up the bunker. He'd cleared out the perishables weeks ago and secured the storage rooms. The dungeon was organized and he'd even left the book with the demon cure on the chair at the center of the Key of Solomon set into the concrete floor. He left Dean's things, what he didn't take with him, in his room. His brother hadn't taken much. Even his duffel was sitting empty in the closet and all of his favorite weapons were still mounted on the wall. He looked inside, half expecting to see Dean sitting on the bed, his head bobbing along to Led Zeppelin or Metallica. It was the fantasies of a little boy, the room was exactly the same as it had been for the last five years, empty. The latching of the handle when he closed the door sounded hollow.

Sam had left the garage for last. He hadn't stepped foot in there in quite some time, but he knew what he would find. The Impala gleamed in the overhead lights, a spell or some aspect of the warding preserving her. The Pulse had taken care of any digital records from their sordid past and he had found and destroyed as many physical copies as he could, with Charlie's help. The car itself wasn't likely to be on any criminal watch lists anymore. He couldn't take her with him, though. The Impala was Dean's Baby. It would always belong to Dean. Sam just didn't feel the same way. The car held too many painful memories he would rather forget, and a lifetime of happy ones he could not afford to be reminded of just yet. So, he covered that gleaming black body with a sheet and said his goodbyes.

When he finally left for the last time, he made sure the front door was locked down tight and that the wards were unbroken, even adding a few of his own. When he got to Bobby's he would put the key somewhere safe, somewhere not even he could get to easily. Sam ignored the sense of panic he felt at the thought of never returning. It had become his home at some point when he was busy dealing with other things. The little Nissan he'd picked up cheap felt wrong, ill-fitting, as he drove away, but he ignored that too.

He stopped at only two places on the way out of town. There was a bar about an hour from the bunker that Dean had frequented before he'd disappeared and Sam had considered stepping inside one last time. It had been Dean's type of place, as rough and tumble as his brother had been. Had always been. He couldn't go inside, but he did lay eyes on it one last time. He'd picked Dean up from that parking lot once, bleeding and barely conscious and bragging about how the four other guys had fared. Sam, though, was different and his favorite place in town, a vegan organic market, reflected just how different the two brothers had been. He had no idea where it came from. Maybe his aborted stint at Stanford had changed him more than he would like to admit. If it wasn't for the dicks with wings and their apocalypse he might still be wondering if he'd been switched at birth, or adopted. He certainly hadn't acted like a Winchester as a boy and those habits he did display were acquired, made necessary by the lifestyle.

One of the benefits of finally having a home base had been the kitchen. Dean had been the cook when they were growing up, but Sam had learned the fine art of food preparation out of desperation when the thought of one more bland chicken breast burger from the cafeteria at Stanford made him want to hurl, or maybe take up anorexia as a hobby. His brother hadn't seemed to care where Sam got the ingredients for his health food meals, only that he was never forced to eat them, and Sam hadn't bothered to tell him. Dean would have given him shit for it, anyways. The only thing worse, in his mind, than eating rabbit food was buying it at a vegan organic market with a cutesy name and hippy themed window decorations. He would have rolled his eyes and the teasing would have never ended. Sam felt right at home, though, and he almost missed the petty jabs at his masculinity when the subject would come up.

The little store was empty when he walked through its single front door. There weren't many like it left in the economic wasteland that the country had become. He ran his fingers over the rough unfinished wooden slats that fashioned the shelving like he was saying farewell. He'd helped build them, one nail and a time, in exchange for groceries last winter. The Men of Letters had kept vast sums of money in various accounts all over the world and the bunker was a veritable treasure trove. He was filthy rich. None of that mattered when the treasury department couldn't get a shipment of cash through the roadblocks set up along the state borders. That winter hadn't been his first experience in a barter economy, but it had been the longest one. He counted himself lucky that the McKennas had been eager to put him to work building shelves for their store so he didn't starve to death.

That was how Wilbert found him, fondly petting the furniture he'd helped build. "I've got a few out back if you're that attached to 'em, Sam," he called out fondly as he trotted in from the stockroom with a box of seaweed chips under each arm.

Sam looked sheepish, snatching his hand back like he'd been burned. Kid. Candy jar. He grabbed a basket instead and started choosing snacks for the road. He wouldn't have many chances to eat this well along the way.

Wilbert, the store owner, didn't seem to notice, too busy stocking shelves. "I'll have some of those tofu and spinach things you're so fond of on Tuesday," he informed him.

Sam grabbed the bag of garlic seaweed chips his friend held out for him. The things were so delicious they were addicting. "I, uh, won't be here. I'm going out of town for a while. Where's Harriet," he inquired. "I want to say goodbye, and, uh, ask if she'd be willing to adopt my dieffenbachia." He pointed out the window to the Nissan. The back seat resembled a mini forest, the three tropical potted plants and their big white blooms taking up most of the space. Harriet, Wilbert's sister, had a green thumb that just wouldn't quit and for a while, the two of them had bonded over their mutual interests, nature and good food. There had even been a time he had considered making a go of it, trying for a true relationship with her, but they both had painful memories from the past that had gotten in the way.

Wilbert leaned out to get a good look at the car. He nodded and replied, "I'm sure she wouldn't mind. You know her. Green thumb. Green everything." He ducked back to his work, crouching as he straightened the bottom shelf and filled in the blank spots. "Any idea when we can expect you back?"

Sam paused, hand poised over a bottle of aloe juice. "I don't know," he admitted.

"You should go see her," he suggested. Wilbert had never said anything about the short fling he'd had with Harriet and hadn't held its ending against him. Sam was glad the friendship he enjoyed with the siblings had endured the little experiment.

"I," he began and then decided to agree "Yeah, I think I will."

After he had paid and was heading out the door, Wilbert gave him a hearty pat on the back. Sam didn't notice the extra bag of soy puffs his friend added to his shopping bag in the process until he was idling in Harriet's driveway. Her eyes had gone soft and watery when Sam had told her he was leaving town. Getting the dieffenbachias settled in her living room was a decent distraction. It gave her something to concentrate on while they talked, while he did his best to say his goodbyes. Part of him thought that one day he'd be able to come back to this life he had built in Lebanon, but with things as they were, he couldn't stand the daily reminders of his brother. Not even moving out of the bunker would solve the problem. Dean's ghost was everywhere.

"I wish we could have worked out," Harriet lamented as she fussed over the plants, frowning at the shriveled brown spots on some of their leaves. He hadn't exactly been the most attentive plant parent lately.

Sam nodded. She was a beautiful woman and a kind soul. In another life, they might have been content together. "Me too," he agreed, an echo of the day they had concluded they would both be happier just as friends. His tone was regretful. It seemed that even he was destined to get in his own way of living the apple pie life. "If, uh, anyone comes asking about me," he started.

She put a hand on his forearm. "Sam, you don't need to worry," she told him. "I don't know about the life you led before you came here, but we protect our own."

"I'm not worried about me," he admitted.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

1979

Mary clapped her hands excitedly as the toddler grabbed onto the coffee table and stood on chubby little legs that were rapidly approaching long and lean. "Such a good boy, Dean," she crowed and snapped a picture.

Dean grinned and clearly said, "Mama, watch me."

"I'm watching, baby," she told him, hoping for his first wobbling steps. Dean was developing much faster than the charts told her to expect. He had tackled crawling by four months and his first word, telephone, was the big excitement in October. John had told her all about last Thursday when Dean had finally stood, holding on to the side of the tub and bending his knees repeatedly like he was dancing. Of course, that proud tale was followed with plenty of masculine griping because Dean then insisted on repeating the motion all throughout bath time, getting his father soaking wet in the process. He was all smiles and giggling whenever she praised him and watching him grow was never boring. Their little boy was full of surprises.

Dean carefully let go of the coffee table. She expected a little wobble and a couple landings on his diapered butt. She'd helped babysit a few cousins when she was younger and learning to walk was one of the more difficult skills. It took a few tries to get the hang of balancing on two feet rather than four limbs. Dean stuck his tongue out and Mary had to resist the urge to go over there and help him.

"You can do it," she encouraged.

His first step was a bit uncertain, his arms winging out to the sides instinctively, but once he had the hang of it, he strode confidently over to her like he'd been doing it all along. When he got to her he did a little hop and grinned.

 

Mary was speechless, barely remembering to press the shutter as he made his way across the carpet. Her hands, reaching out to catch him, had been unnecessary. He hadn't lost his footing once.

Bright green toddler eyes looked up at her. "Mama, did I do," Dean asked uncertainly.

His grammar still needed work, but she understood him perfectly. "Yes, Dean, you did it perfectly," she praised and put down the camera. Oh boy, if she thought his crawling phase had been tiring, she had no idea what she was in for now.

Two weeks later Dean was running.

John had just returned home from the shop, smelling strongly of motor oil and gasoline. No matter how much he scrubbed that scent never completely went away. Mary was used to it. The chemical scents of an automotive shop had a lot in common with the lubricants used on the various weapons she had grown up training with. She had almost told her husband so many times what type of life he had helped her escape, but she knew he would never believe her. So, she held her tongue and enjoyed this normal life she had stolen for herself by forsaking the family business, hoping the past would never catch up to her and take it all away.

"Mary, I brought some apples for pie," John called out as he walked through the kitchen door.

He heard her yell, "Dean," from somewhere in the house before a bowling ball shaped head collided with his family jewels. Dean looked up at him in surprise and toppled back on his butt.

The apples hit the counter with a thud as the breath whooshed out of John's lungs and a wave of nausea made him dizzy. He swallowed, fighting the urge to heave. When he got it back under control, he made a little pained whining sound and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs.

Mary marched into the kitchen and scooped up the little blond terror. "Dean, what did I tell you," she asked sternly.

The kid pouted. "No no run," he replied solemnly.

She nodded. "That's right. No running in the house," she repeated for emphasis.

He reached over and awkwardly patted his father on the head, "Sorry, Daddy."

He grimaced and resisted the urge to yell, "That's alright, champ. Listen to your mother next time."

Mary set Dean down and his exit was much more sedate, if a little wobbly.

When the sounds of his son playing with the blocks in the next room started up, John exclaimed, "I thought he just started walking!" This was way off the charts not normal.

He was about to really get into it when his impending outburst was diffused by a chubby little hand suddenly appearing in his, "I better, daddy. Do better. Better." Dean was a sensitive child, always trying to keep the peace.

The nausea abated, replaced by the screaming pain of two oval-shaped bruises between his legs. He had the distinct pleasure of feeling like his testicles were trying to flee up into his abdomen. After a few steadying breaths, John picked Dean up and corralled the squirming little boy on his lap expertly. "Settle down kiddo," he soothed.

After dinner, John was on the couch listening to the news on the radio with Dean half asleep in his arms. Since he had started walking the kid was all explosive energy and then crash and burn, sleeping wherever he landed. They had gotten used to the post-meal naps, using those precious few moments to recharge for another toddler onslaught. It wasn't that Dean was a bad child. He was just very high energy and extremely curious. Since he was far more developmentally advanced than his peers, it was difficult to predict exactly what he could and could not get into until there was a mess to clean up. Dean snuffled, wiping his nose on his father's shirt and then settled down again, his eyes never opening. The movement revealed a patch of skin on his side with a bandage.

"Mary," John called to get her attention. "How did this happen," he asked and pointed at the bandage when she poked her head in from the kitchen. It was accusatory, just curious. Dean was not clumsy.

She smiled. "Oh, that is why we had the no running talk earlier," she said. "He ran into a low shelf at the grocery store. It must have had a sharp edge cause the cut was clean. Not deep enough for stitches, though," she added as if she would know.

John picked at one edge of the bandage and lifted it up to get a look, revealing a thin pink line of scar tissue. It looked days old. "Mary," he called.

"John, I'm finishing up the pie," she complained from the kitchen.

John lifted Dean into his arms and walked over to her. "Mary," he repeated more urgently.

"What," she asked impatiently. She was tired, it had been a long day, and she really just wanted a little baking alone time right now.

He removed the bandage and showed her the scar. "Are you sure this happened today," he asked gently.

She stared, remembering the blood and the silent tears as she patched him up. They hadn't lasted long. Her little boy was a strong one with a big heart. He put on a brave face as soon as her own lip began to quiver in sympathy. "Yes," she replied, too astonished to say anything more complicated. Dean had passed all the tests she knew to use. He was human. He had to be.

John wrapped an arm around her. "Don't worry, honey. We'll figure this out," he reassured her. "Just think, he could be the world's first superhero." The joke fell flat, though.

Mary tried very hard not to think about what her father would have done in her place. She wasn't a hunter anymore and her son was no monster.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

The Pulse had made life both easier and harder for hunters. Even ten years after the initial destructive wave, unleashed when Lucifer's cage had cracked open, the country was still fractured and steeped in chaos. Federal law enforcement rarely talked to state and no one gave a damn about funneling information all the way down the pipeline to the locals. What did get through had to be sought out via back door channels and back alley deals. Otherwise, it could conceivably take weeks for a single fingerprint search to turn up anything of value, if the report was even received at all. That made a lot of small town cops very twitchy when it came to jurisdiction and strangers mucking around in what they considered their territory. So, on the one hand, hunters had a decent lag time, a buffer between when they showed up in a town and when their criminal record could be expected to make an appearance, if it still existed at all. On the other, the local law and civilians alike had an overdeveloped sense of suspicion and itchy trigger fingers. It was a dangerous combination.

That was how Sam found himself sitting in lockup in some podunk town in Nebraska and answering the same series of questions for the thousandth time. "I stopped for gas," he said tiredly.

"Right," the deputy drawled, "and just happened to stumble across Ned's recently murdered body." For the thousandth time, they didn't believe him. No murder weapon, no blood spatter on his clothing, no motive. None of that seemed to matter to the Deputy, not even the fact that Sam didn't do it and he'd said so the first chance he got. The man had been butchered. Even the walls of the small convenience store needed a good scrubbing. Sam had seen a lot of dead bodies in his time and that scene had turned his stomach. He was tempted to stick around and make sure this murder wasn't, well, his sort of thing. "Well, since you won't fess up. Mind telling me just what you're doing here, Mr. Gentili?" Problem was, he seemed to be in a bit of hot water with the locals.

Sam looked out the window. "Just passing through on my way to Wyoming," he offered, volunteering a teeny bit more information than the last time. Maybe he'd just keep an eye on this place and come back if there were more bodies.

What looked to be the sole department secretary slash dispatch slash anything else that needed to be done poked her head into the room. "Merle, got a call for you," she informed him before winking at Sam and returning to her desk.

Merle returned a few minutes later with a fax in his hand and a grin on his face. "Whelp, Mr. Gene Frehley, looks to me like someone wants you pretty bad," he gloated and turned the paper around so Sam could see it. It looked like a WANTED poster from two hundred years ago, hand drawn. An artist's sketch of his face with his description underneath it proclaiming his name to be Gene Frehley, armed and dangerous. Apparently, there was a large reward for his capture. Alive, thankfully. Along the bottom, it included a name and a phone number to call.

Sam groaned. He was positive he hadn't pissed anyone off in at least the last six months. He had barely left the bunker. He also didn't remember using the alias Gene Frehley recently. That sounded like an old ID from back when Dean had been picking their names. "I've never been in the military," he said.

"What the hell does that have to do with anything," Merle asked sharply.

He nodded towards the fax. "This Frehley guy. A Colonel in the US Army is looking for him. Last I checked, I never enlisted," Sam explained. "And my name is Steven. You've got the papers to prove it." He squinted at the phone number. That looked like it was out of Wyoming.

Merle grunted, obviously not satisfied that his stellar interviewing techniques weren't working. He annoyed Sam for a while longer until a call about a drunk with a loaded shotgun sent him out on the road. It was a beautiful sight watching that man lumber out of the room knowing it would be a bit until he got back.

Sam sighed in relief, glad for the quiet. Well, quiet compared to Merle yacking away at him from across the bars. He even caught a short nap, lulled to sleep listening to the woman in the other room relay messages back and forth over the radio. She had a very soothing voice and Sam had long ago learned how to catch up on his rest just about anywhere, or for any length of time.

The posting turned out to be nearly five years old and Charlie's handiwork on the Gentili identity pulled through. Another point in his favor was that this little town actually had an honest, competent medical examiner slash town doctor slash forensics tech. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy with a genuine interest in the field. His report denied finding so much as a single speck of blood on Sam's clothing, other than the bottom of his shoes. Sam had, like an idiot, stepped in the puddle just inside the door. Merle had been pissed when he found out his murder weapon didn't match anything that Sam was carrying or any of the other weapons found at the convenience store.

Sam had planted the seeds of doubt and he didn't give up. The only time he had been more satisfied, was when he received the results of his obsessive studying for the LSAT, when he'd seen that one seven four printed nice and big on the report. Maybe he never had the chance to become a lawyer, but he still got to argue some sort of case. He'd made peace with his shady drifter existence long ago and legal trivia that might seem minor to some were damned handy in moments like these. He talked legal circles around the deputy until the man finally stuttered out a phrase akin to the law enforcement's white flag and conceded defeat.

At daybreak the next day Sam was free to go. Merle glowered the entire time, but he couldn't hold him on either the warrant or the murder. Sam didn't even bother with breakfast. He picked up his things from the motel and made tracks. He wanted to be as far away from Merle and his coworkers as soon as possible, before they came up with something else to hold him on. He wouldn't put it past them. So he put the town in his rearview the moment they relinquished the keys to his car and floored the gas. There was no way he would be sticking around for further questioning. Fuck that.

He was so relieved to finally be out of that holding cell that he nearly overlooked the tail he picked up a few miles past the South Dakota border. Black body, black tires, black windows. It was a shiny new government-issued black SUV with all the trimmings. He could even see a hint of the roll cage where the overhead bar could not be completely concealed. It screamed special ops or FBI. The feds had been a lot more overt about their shadier operations lately, reminiscent of the Soviet secret police. They were very different than they had been before the Pulse, with rows and rows of sharp iniquitous teeth. There were rumors of people disappearing that were never heard from again, no indications they had been grabbed either. It turned out that paperwork was not a necessity to hold someone that strictly didn't exist.

He led them on a merry chase through the woods, his heart pounding the entire time, and lost them about ten miles in among the trees. It had been close a couple times there when the little Nissan, not meant for off-road travel, got a tire stuck on a patch of mud or a fallen tree limb. His only consolation was that the SUV didn't appear to be doing any better. When he thought he had his shadow sufficiently confused, Sam ditched the car and headed out on foot, keeping to the tree line as much as possible.

His cell phone got a strong signal when the first hints of civilization began to invade the forest. He'd been walking for several hours and at every mile he would turn it on, hoping for at least one bar. As soon as he saw that little icon light up, he sent a coded text to Charlie's burner containing the word 'poughkeepsie'. Then Sam destroyed his own phone and scattered the pieces.

With a sigh, Sam resettled his duffel on his shoulder and followed the signs of humanity towards the next town. He was looking forward to walking into the first convenience store he came across. He'd finished off his water bottle.


	3. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam nodded, "Oh it's him." No doubt about it, unless he was possessed or a shifter. "Are they all like that?" Please don't say yes, Sam thought to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *As … you … down … = As long as you don't drown me this time.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

1984

The big black Impala rumbled to a stop outside the Starlight Motel, with it's half lit sign and a parking lot in desperate need of being repaved. Someone had set this place up with high hopes and the interstate diverted all the customers some time afterward, taking their money with them. What was left for the struggling business were people like him, traveling the back roads with barely a dollar to his name. It wasn't much of a living.

John wrenched the door open with one boot, cradling his injured arm close to his body. He'd taken a hit. Maybe two. He wouldn't be sure until he got the room and stripped down to check it out. There were quite a few places on his body that were trying to get his attention. One of them happened to be the hand that'd nearly gotten crushed when he fell. The werewolf had been extra clever tonight, but he'd taken it down. He hoped the boys were asleep by now. He wasn't up to playing twenty questions. He was too tired to come up with that many convincing lies. Dean had the annoying habit of staying awake until he got back from whatever hunt he was on, or bar he'd crawled back from. For a five-year-old, it was impressive how little he slept, not at all if he didn't want to. Never had really.

John cursed as the fingers on his good hand fumbled the room key, slick with blood, before he could use it to unlock the door. He stank, he hurt, he really wanted to get to bed, and his fingers didn't seem to be working quite right. It could be pain, fatigue, or true damage. He wouldn't know until he got a good look at his injuries, and maybe downed a pain pill or two. Some of the blood on his hands was very definitely his. Too fresh and dripping to be anything else. He just had to get the little key into that little hole on the door handle there, the one he could barely see in the weak glow coming from the bulb over the door. On a normal night, the task wouldn't be so daunting, but the hunt had been a long one and burning the carcass afterward had been its own unpleasant, messy task. He was beyond exhausted.

The door cracked open just as he bent over to retrieve the dropped key, curious green eyes peeking out. Dammit, of course Dean had stayed up to keep watch. He must have heard his father outside and opened the door to investigate. The kid probably had some form of PTSD that John didn't have the money or inclination to get treated, and he took his brother's safety far more seriously than John had taken just about anything in his own life, his marriage included. There were times he wondered if that familial devotion extended to himself, or if Dean occasionally saw him as a threat to be assessed.

"Go to bed, Dean," he ordered without giving it much thought.

A single gunshot went off over his head and he could feel the heat and concussion from the muzzle blast. John hit the deck, automatically covering his head with both arms. His ears hadn't even stopped ringing when, only seconds later, he figured out there was not going to be a second shot. There wasn't even return fire. The night was dead quiet, even the crickets had shut their traps following that explosion of sound. He lifted his head to find Dean clutching his .45 in both hands, a sort of grim determination on his face. Dammit, he'd been looking for that. There was a spot right between the boy's eyes where the recoil had sent the rear sight slamming into his skull, the sharp edges tearing through flesh easily. A steady line of red oozed sluggishly from the wound, a minor cut, but Dean either didn't notice it or he didn't care. Any other kid would have dropped the gun and started bawling his eyes out, but not Dean. His pain tolerance was higher than most. John's oldest had a solid carbon steel core. John twisted around, looking for the boy's target, and found a crumpled furry form a few feet from the Impala's back bumper. It wasn't moving.

He stood and snatched the gun from Dean's hands. The clip, when he checked it, was loaded with silver. He nodded, satisfied when he found only one bullet missing. Silver was getting expensive. "Get back inside," John barked without looking behind him.

There was a quiet, "D'n," from Sam before the door clicked shut followed by Dean shushing his sleepy little brother, petering off until nothing more could be heard from the other side of the door.

John's heart rate didn't start to go down until there was at least one barrier between his sons and the monsters outside. It was flimsy protection, but for now, it was all they had. That and Dean's crack shot, apparently. He took a deep breath, fighting that jittery feeling of too much adrenaline for too long a time, and got close enough to the body to see that it was another werewolf, smaller and probably female. That had been too close. He hadn't known about the second one and all he could think was… What if he hadn't been here? Would Dean have woken in time without the Impala's rough engine to cue him?

The monster didn't move when he nudged it with the toe of his boot, the muscles limp. Not a twitch. He discovered why when he rolled it over onto its back. There was a single round hole in the chest, a puddle of red slowly cooling where the werewolf had landed. Yep, it was definitely dead. Dean had hit the monster's heart with one shot, on his first try. When John had shown the inquisitive five-year-old how his .45 worked he hadn't expected this. He didn't know what he had expected, but it hadn't been… this.

Not for the first time, John wished Mary was still here. He didn't know how to do this without her. With two normal boys, he had a chance they'd both come out of this whole. But with a genetically enhanced killing machine for his oldest? He was at a loss. Maybe he should just indulge the kid's more violent instincts and hope for the best. It wasn't like he expected the boy to hurt his little brother, not even by accident, and he didn't see that changing anytime soon. In the past, so much as a bruise on the toddler had Dean acting very much like a mama grizzly whose cub had just been threatened. Not even John had been able to get close to Sam until Dean calmed down.

John made a note to take the kid target shooting while he healed up from this last hunt. He knew of plenty of old cabins that would be standing empty this time of year and the boy seemed eager to learn when he'd handled the .45. If Dean was going to be as good with this as he was with anything else, he'd be useful. At least the boys would be safer when John was forced to leave them alone during a job. Kid probably wouldn't take no for an answer if he tried to put off weapons training for a while anyways.

John wrapped the dead werewolf in a shower curtain and took it a good drive out into the woods for disposal. That jittery adrenaline feeling he'd been operating under for the last ten hours evened out as he watched the carcass burn.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Sam slept beneath an overpass for a couple hours and ate beans out of a can with his fingers. He was exhausted and he hadn't been able to get as far as he'd hoped. Gone were the days that he could jog for miles. He got winded easily and he'd been forced to take frequent breaks to recover. It had been a long time since he had been on foot like this. He did have a few things going for him, though. Unlike last time, he really did look like a homeless hobo and not some fresh-faced innocent teen. He'd put on as many layers as he could manage in order to stay warm in spite of the freeze that had taken hold in the middle of the night. The contrasting shades of brown and green were not very flattering. Dean had always pulled off the rugged woodsman look better. Yet, Sam found, completely by accident, that his layering could serve another purpose. They did a decent job of hiding his bulk. If he hunched his back he could even manufacture some pudge around the middle. He had no idea who could be after him, but since the convenience store incident, Sam's luck had been shitty. Since shapeshifting was out of the question, or glamour, he opted for a wardrobe change and some dirt to change his appearance. He could drop the act when he got a little further out of the area, when he started to feel safe again.

The improvised disguise got him to the next town without incident, where he purchased another burner phone. The first thing he did was send a text to Charlie's backup number, hoping she still had it. She called back while he was eating.

"Moose! Holy shit," she burst out as soon as he picked up. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know," he admitted, not wanting to say anything too incriminating in the crowded diner.

"I got your text and hauled ass," she exclaimed, sounding almost exhilarated about it. "So, why the panic button?"

"Funny story," Sam replied. "I got arrested on trumped up charges and on my way out of town someone in a black SUV starts tailing me. I think I lost them, but it just didn't feel right," he said as softly as he could manage. He left enough cash on the table to cover the bill and walked outside. He'd finished eating anyways.

"You got that right, Samsquatch," she replied gravely. "I did some snooping seeing as you were worried enough to sound the alarm." When he frowned she added, "Don't worry. I was careful. About twenty-five hours ago your name got handed off to a secured server from this tiny little town in Minnesota. I'm guessing that's the Sheriff's office you were at. The signal bounced between secure servers enough times I lost track of it. This was some pretty nifty software they had running. I mean, I could crack it, no problem, but it slowed me down just enough. By the time I worked my way through the connection was gone. Could be military, or something else. Maybe corporate. So, I backtracked to the origin. You really pissed someone off this time, Samster. The Sheriff that arrested you received instructions to stall as long as he could and then release you. There's even a two hour time window specified. I've got that evil empire vibe going on here."

"They were getting that SUV into place. How did you find that out," he asked, surprised and wondering if she had even bothered to take a breath since he answered the phone.

Charlie giggled. "You'd be amazed at what I can dig up. I called the Sheriff pretending to be Army."

"And they didn't figure it out," he huffed, not wanting her to get caught up in whatever this turned out to be. His tone said clearly that he believed it, though.

"Oh ye of little faith, my good subject," she retorted in a sing-song voice. "I vanquished a civil war in Oz. I can outwit a couple of chintzy surveillance programs." She arched a brow, cheekily daring him to contradict her. "I was about to call you when this went down. I think I found Dean. I waited because I needed to be sure. You said not to bother you with it, but…" She was babbling now, nervous.

A cold chill raced down his spine. "Where," he asked. Not Wyoming. Please don't say Wyoming.

"Umm, Seattle? I think. I've got this video. It looks like him and the drive I found it on came from Seattle," Charlie replied.

He sucked in a breath. Dean. "Are you sure?" He hated asking. Of course she was sure. After the last time, she wouldn't dare bring it up unless she was positive on the ID.

"Yes," she answered softly. "I'm sure. It looks like him and he still has the tattoo and Cas' handprint on his shoulder. That still looks badass, by the way." She'd only seen it a few times, usually splattered with blood while Sam stitched his brother back together, but she knew it well enough to spot a fake. The raised scar tissue was very distinctive.

And Cas. He hadn't seen the angel in a while. Not since Sam lost his temper at yet another false trail and quit looking. Cas, still struggling to adapt to slowly dying as a human at the time, had not taken his giving up well. Last he had heard the angel was palling around with his sister planning to fix up Heaven after finding his grace and re-opening the gates. The guy really was Dean's angel. He hadn't so much as texted Sam to let him know whether or not he, or rather his vessel, was still breathing. "Can I see it," he asked.

"Sure, come on over," she chirped.

"No," he hastily replied. "Not there. In case I didn't shake them I don't want to put you in danger."

She was silent for a moment and he could just hear Charlie's eyes roll through the phone. She finally asked, "Overprotective much?"

"You bet your ass," Sam quickly replied.

"Fine. I'll, uh. I'll find a place and text you," she said, a note of fond exasperation in her voice.

Sam stole a car. It was even more run down than the last, but it did in fact run and he didn't think anyone would be looking for it for a while. Charlie texted him an address somewhere in southern Illinois and he drove all day to get there. He arrived dirty, smelly, exhausted, and not too happy to see Charlie standing on the porch of the abandoned home she'd directed him to.

"I don't want you to get hurt," he grumbled as he wrapped her in a bear hug.

"Hello to you too, Samsquatch," she retorted. "Water's running. Down the hall and to the right," she hinted. He settled his duffel more firmly on his shoulder and stalked down the hall. "You're cooking," she said to his retreating back.

Five minutes later, he dumped his duffel on the living room floor feeling freshly showered and much less crabby. "I didn't see anyone following," he remarked. "Are you sure you don't need to get back?" Hint hint.

Charlie appeared around the corner, carrying an older looking machine. "I took a few vacation days. My new boss is awesome. Hot too," she commented.

He chuckled when he saw what she'd assembled on the kitchen counter. "This isn't cooking," he announced and caught her eyebrow raise in his peripheral vision. He wasn't going to turn down the coffee and the ingredients for two tossed salads waiting for him, though. The craving for fresh vegetables had been riding him the last several days. "But, I'm not complaining. I'll assemble and you start playing those videos," he bargained.

"I was hoping to watch a couple episodes of Doctor Who and sack out," she admitted.

He gave her the patented puppy eyes. "Please?" He couldn't wait till morning. He wouldn't be able to sleep wondering why she had called him back into a hunt he'd abandoned months ago.

"Get chopping, mister," she ordered and set the laptop where he didn't have to crane his neck. "You owe me some Doctor Who after this," she prodded.

Sam rolled his eyes and asked, "Got some Firefly on there instead?"

"What kind of a Queen would leave her kingdom without her trusty external hard drive of awesomeness," she asked and he knew that meant yes. Mal reminded him of Dean and Sam had gotten attached to the show after Charlie had blackmailed him into watching the first episode.

The OS booted molasses slow while the little clock cursor mocked him. This was one of her older models, and it limped along like it could somehow feel the weight of its own age. Sam was glad for the simple task. One helpful side effect of the life was that he was almost as good at slicing vegetables as he was slicing off vampire heads. There was no longer any effort in his movements, swift and precise. It didn't keep his mind from racing around with possibilities, but it did give his hands something to do while they waited.

"Serve up," he announced. By the time the machine was ready he had several tuna sandwiches and a huge bowl of salad ready to go.

"There are five clips," Charlie told him. The cursor hovered over a folder on the desktop and then she opened another folder inside the first. She clicked on the first one and asked, "Are you sure you want to do this tonight?"

Sam nodded, "I won't be able to sleep."

"Here goes," she mumbled and pressed play.

He promptly lost his appetite. The food was probably delicious, would have been in any other setting, but it could have been ash on his tongue for all attention he paid it as he mechanically chewed and swallowed, his eyes fixed on the computer screen. The video started with a full back view. Sam recognized the set of the man's shoulders, the slight bow to his legs. He was blindfolded and his stance was tense like he was expecting an attack. The camera rotated until the man was shown in profile, revealing him to be unmistakably Dean.

"You found him," he said with awe, and a little bit of fear. Charlie had been reluctant to play these for Sam and she was not a fragile person.

The demonstration started out innocent enough. That's what this had to be, a demonstration. It looked too staged to be anything else. Someone was showing off, and it wasn't his brother. Dean was acting like he had a gun to his head and no one to protect. He was resigned, readied but not eager. Sam watched him cock his head to the side, like Cas used to do, and then he was in motion before Sam could see anything else happening on the screen. Dean moved easily to intercept the large padded baton, even with the blindfold tied firmly in place. He caught it in his lissom fingers like he had seen it coming. Sam didn't think much of it. They both knew how to fight in the dark, had done it many times before in both training and real situations. Dad had made certain of it.

Dean never failed to block the hits, not even as the baton picked up speed, swinging faster and faster. All Sam could acknowledge, though, was the strain it was putting on his brother, the physical and emotional toll it must have taken to endure this assault against his will. There was a lot of force being put behind each blow. Sam could see the muscles on the faceless man's shoulders ripple. Whoever it was on the other end of that thing was not going easy and even a single hit risked serious injury despite the padding on the weapon. Dean's face was blank with the sort of deadly intense concentration and focused lack of emotion that had worried Sam those first months after Dean's return from Purgatory. It was the only time he could recall that he had ever been afraid of his brother and not for him.

The padded bar was eventually set aside. Sam could see the handle sticking out from a bucket just inside the frame. For a moment he thought it was over, that he had seen the worst of it. Charlie could be silly sometimes. Maybe this was a prank. Then an ax came swinging out of nowhere, aiming for a neck strike. Sam swore, his heart pounding even though he knew this had already happened and there was nothing her could do now. Dean didn't have the time to breathe, or even think as it tried to take his head clean off. Sam could just make out the olive green shirt of the man holding the ax as Dean twisted around. He, by some miracle, managed to avoid losing his head, though a thin line of blood was trickling from his left forearm. He knew a defensive wound when he saw one.

His older brother had this weird sixth sense in a fight. He'd been utter shit at chess, but he could run an obstacle course full of Dad's best-hidden tricks without a scratch. This, though, this was a whole new ballgame. It was huge, super-soldier sort of shit. Was Dean some sort of military enhancement guinea pig? Dean appeared to be both faster and stronger than he'd ever been, to Sam's knowledge, but that didn't stop Sam from flinching with each attack of the sharp blade as if it would be his brother's last. Come on, Dean.

Next came arrows, Sam's knuckles white on the counter. They were the kind with razored steel tips, and he couldn't imagine how they could possibly escalate the threat to Dean's life any further. He didn't even want to think about the speeds at which it could be traveling. Dean seemed to be up to the challenge, though. He was holding a snapped carbon fiber shaft with that patented cocky grin on his face before he'd even seen it enter the frame. Sam stopped the video, breathing hard, and forced himself to replay that moment, advancing the image a few frames at a time. He watched Dean explode into motion long before Sam's own reflexes would have kicked in. He watched the shaft of the arrow snap in his grip, a one-handed grip. Sam wanted so badly to see those flecked green eyes, to know for certain they weren't black instead.

"What the fuck," Sam asked to no one in particular when the clip ended. "What the hell did they do to him?"

"I know right? But, that's got to be Dean," Charlie asked excitedly.

Sam nodded, "Oh it's him." No doubt about it, unless he was possessed or a shifter. "Are they all like that?" Please don't say yes, Sam thought to himself.

She didn't answer right away. The look in her eyes, though, left him with no doubt when she said, "It gets worse." She closed out the application almost gratefully. "We can go over my notes tomorrow. I'm beat," she suggested.

He turned the full force of his pathetic puppy dog eyes on her. "Please, just one more," he asked.

She bit her lip, but didn't say anything as she selected the next one and hit play. Right away Sam saw why Charlie wanted to wait for the morning. He had to consider that she might have chosen the tamest clip to play for him first. There was nothing comforting about watching his brother fight six armed men simultaneously. It was too many, even for Dean with all his training, all the field experience fighting things much stronger and faster than himself. His big brother was about to be beaten to a pulp. The fact that it didn't happen left him with a whole bunch of unsettling questions and no answers anywhere in sight. All six assailants were down on the ground in less than a minute, Dean breathing hard and sporting some damage, but nothing even close to what he had been expecting. He took them down hard and fast and they stayed there. Sam thought he knew what Dean was capable of. Maybe he had once, but he wasn't so sure about that anymore.

Charlie covered his hand on the touchpad with her own. He hadn't realized it was shaking; he was shaking. Sam knew she was trying to help. She didn't move to shut down the computer. She was leaving the decision to him. He gave her an apologetic side hug and selected the next clip, hitting play as soon as it loaded. He could not resist. Maybe the next one would hold the clues he could use to track his big brother down. Charlie turned away to clean up their dinner mess. "I can't watch anymore," she told him. "It'll give me nightmares."

The next clip was twenty-seven minutes long. The setting was simple enough with an underwater camera pointed at the bottom of a deep pool. A cage with bars thick enough for a shark cage and about the size of a spacious coffin was lowered into the water, just big enough to fit Dean's six foot two frame. His brother looked unconscious but his eyes opened wide when the water hit his toes and he pushed upward. He looked afraid, but the cage was solidly built and Dean had been locked inside, scrabbling at the lid with his hands in his efforts to get out. He started kicking and yelling in the too-tight confinement when that failed. Sam touched the screen, tears making tracks down his cheeks as his brother lost those last few inches of air. This was so much worse. Five minutes after the cage was fully submerged Dean still hadn't moved a muscle and Sam couldn't watch any more.

"Is he dead," he asked in a tight voice. He closed his eyes against the possibility.

Charlie turned back to him from the sink and softly petted his shoulder. "No," she assured him. "I don't know how he did it, but after twenty minutes they pull the cage from the water and Dean's… he's still alive. He survived." Dean held his breath underwater for twenty minutes. Holy shit.

He looked at her, pleading, "Do you know who they are? If you know anything, anything at all." All he could think was, 'They tried to kill my brother'.

She bit her lip. "Maybe. Did you see the uniforms?" He nodded. Of course he'd seen it. "Definitely military or ex-military. I mean, that funky warrant did list an Army Colonel and not the FBI as the contact point. There's more stuff on this drive and I left a notepad file on the desktop with everything I found. It isn't much to go on and I have extra copies just in case, but I haven't seen it all," she told him, talking about as fast as he could process. She broke off with a yawn.

Sam felt a little guilty. Here she was, probably fresh from a late work night and he'd asked her to drive who knows how far to bring this to him. Charlie could power through a thirty-six-hour hack session without much complaint. If she was admitting fatigue… well, that was saying something. He couldn't ask anything more of her. "Charlie, you're exhausted." She shook her head in denial. "No, you are. That's ok. Get some sleep. I can look over this without you." When she looked like she was going to protest he added, "I'll start with your notes."

Ten minutes later she walked back into the room wearing her footed Lego Star Wars pajamas. "Thanks, Sammy," she mumbled as she collapsed onto the couch like a puppet with her strings cut, limbs lax. She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. The poor girl was exhausted and too focused on looking tough to tell him. She didn't even get the blanket pulled all the way up. Sam did that for her. He tucked it around her slight frame before settling in front of the computer for the night. There would be no sleep for him.

The other three clips were equally unnerving for various reasons. One was a split screen. Dean was on a treadmill and his vital signs were on the other half of the frame. They had him running full out before his breathing and heart rate picked up, at all. Dean's face was actually facing the camera when he was speaking, this time smiling though the good humor didn't reach his eyes. Fake. His brother was lying, putting on a show like he always did. Never let them see you cry. Dean seemed to chuckle at the reply, but didn't say anything else. The mouthpiece he bit down on a moment later prevented speaking. Sam spent a good ten minutes with the playback on half speed trying to figure out what Dean had said. Wasted time. Best he could decipher was, 'As … you … down …'. Useless.

The early morning hours were well on their way when Sam finally looked at the clock, stretching the kinks from his muscles. Charlie hadn't made a sound, thoroughly zonked out and off in dream land. The thin strip of couch between her curled legs and the armrest looked really tempting. The yawn caught him by surprise, opening his mouth wide enough to pop his jaw. Sam started another pot of coffee, hoping the caffeine would carry him the last few hours.

As soon as the scent of freshly brewed coffee beans filled the room, Charlie stirred. He watched her stretch, grumble, and stagger to the counter to swipe the biggest mug, and fill it to the brim. He couldn't help grinning.

"So," she said, "I'm assuming you didn't get any shut eye." He looked at her, sheepish but unrepentant. She had been warned. "Find anything useful," she asked instead of admonishing him. He was a grown-assed man. Besides, only Dean had ever managed to get him to cooperate with a reasonable bedtime schedule.

Sam handed her a box of pop tarts. "This isn't the first time they've gotten their hands on my brother," he said. "There's some seriously fucked up shit in here."

Her eyebrows rose and she said, "Do tell."

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2016

X1-042 was never left unattended. He'd earned the right to walk around unrestrained, but someone always had an eye on him, especially now. Yesterday 042 had killed two convicts in a training session. By accident. Their spines snapped before he realized his hands were around their scrawny necks. It'd been easy, balsa wood bone. Hell, he hadn't consciously told his body to move in the first place. He'd just reacted. He didn't know what happened, and when he came to his senses the guards had already him strapped to the gurney. Their eyes had been wide, white flashing, as they held him at gunpoint, tied down and confused with two bodies on the floor. He was getting better, slowly, as he acclimated to the drugs. That episode only lasted a few minutes, maybe a half-hour. The injection the week before that had left him a rabid killing machine for almost two hours. Like a wild animal backed into a corner and running on survival instincts. Any movement was judged an enemy, fight to the death. He'd actually bitten someone, nearly tore a chunk out of the man's arm, and 042 still remembered the meaty copper penny taste clinging to his tongue and the feeling of that rubbery chunk of flesh when it came back up.

042 had been at Manticore going on a year. Or had it been two? He wasn't sure. Didn't care. He'd spent too long in the dark at the beginning to bother figuring it out at this point. All he knew was this morning he'd woken up to a light breakfast sliding through the slot in his door, nothing heavy. It was a treatment day. His own name for it wasn't very nice, but it was more accurately descriptive. His stomach was made of steel but the doc still found ways to make him spew. The early formulations always caused that particular reaction. The nausea had been one of his least favorite side effects, and it had disappeared right around the time they started giving him tasteless goop to eat on treatment days. Maybe they didn't appreciate cleaning up his vomit and more than he enjoyed having to taste it coming back up. Now he just had to deal with the other adjustments to his system. Everything about him that had previously been just a little better than normal was getting amped up, and he was also pretty sure some of those changes were becoming permanent. Was there such a thing?

042 picked at the brightly colored vet wrap at the bend of his arm, counting down the minutes until the bandage could be removed. Counting down the hours until he could eat again. The girls, a bubbly pair of nurses he'd grown fond of, had chosen turquoise today. He had woken up in a good mood, feeling cheeky and flirtatious despite the events planned for him. Almost like the old 042, before life had worn him down and taken the shine out of his eyes. On those days the nurses liked to tease him, make him smile even more. They called it his thousand-watt smile, like he could light up the room. He had his suspicions that it was all just a ploy designed to ensure his cooperation. His life was set in the patterns of a glorified lab rat, one of hundreds. Even on his good days he couldn't forget that, couldn't escape it. He'd been born for it, created in a test tube like those freaks in the basement. Hell, most of them were younger than he was. Even for the early attempts 042's genetic code was an anomaly, an aberration. He didn't belong anywhere or with anyone, not really, and he definitely didn't belong out there, walking among the normal folk. The last few years had taught him that. He'd started out in that basement, after all, one freak taking care of the others, his brothers and sisters. He'd languished in that ash heap until this new scientist got it into his head that he could mend the faults in 042's cocktail. He'd become a pet project, emphasis on pet. He hadn't heard his own name in years and no longer bothered to ask what was being pushed into his veins. The various strings of numbers and letters on the labels bore little meaning, resembling a chemical formula. He'd have an easier time deciphering Sanskrit.

He must have been grinning like a fool when X5-494 walked by because the kid gave him a wide berth. His fatigues were caked with dirt from whatever shithole assignment the little fucker was returning from. It was freaky seeing a teenage him walking around, especially after 494 took an instant dislike of 042 some months ago, not long after he earned his 'upstairs privileges' from psyops. He could relate to Cas now. That little chapter in his life had cost him almost an entire year.

"Dude, really," 042 complained as the kid passed, practically sliding against the wall. He understood 494 didn't like him, but it wasn't like this shit was contagious.

Bright green eyes met bright green eyes and the kid actually snorted. "Just stay out of my way," he snapped, contempt dripping from his tone.

"What's your problem," 042 growled, stepping towards him, puffed up and offended.

494 stepped up to him, until they were nearly nose to nose. Nearly. He hadn't quite grown to adult height, had another inch to go. That would take a few years, and a late growth spurt if 042 remembered correctly, but 042 didn't have much on him. 042's eyes nearly crossed trying to focus on those furious green eyes. "Your face is, 042. You've got no right to it," he growled, his voice not as deep and lacking the gravel the older man's had gained with age.

042 sniffed, "Yeah, well. It was mine first, asshole. Get used to it." Maybe the attitude was genetic.

Like that would ever happen. 494 pushed him up against the wall, putting minor effort into pinning the bigger man in place. "Let's get one thing straight. I don't know why they let you out of your cell, but you are not mission capable, X1. That means I have no use for you. Don't go thinking we have anything in common just cause we look alike. I don't know you and I don't want to. Got that?" He forced 042 into the wall a little harder, back of his skull smacking the concrete behind him, and then let go.

042 laughed as 494 walked away. "Dude, one of these days you have got to show me exactly how much you can lift," he joked to cover the wince he couldn't prevent as his ribcage began to ache. He whistled when the teen flipped him the bird. Geez, that kid was strong. If he had pushed any harder 042 might have needed a visit medical for broken ribs. Maybe he should have shoved the kid across the room.

Ten minutes later the full effect of the drug set in. This new cocktail had a real kick, putting his teeth on edge. He was spoiling for a fight and he was only getting worse. It was like fire in his blood, or acid. The impression had him vacillating between twitching with phantom pain and shaking as he fought to hold back the rage. He knew he looked like a junkie these days, bloodshot eyes and track marks on his arms. He was perpetually strung out lately and he couldn't have cared less. He was beginning to understand what little brother had seen in the demon blood. So, they kept an eye on him and doubled his guard detail on the days doc pushed some new poison cocktail into his system. This was his routine now. Day in. Day out.

He shook some of the tension from his muscles, trying to get a handle on himself, and his jailers settled their hands on their tasers, nervous. He was pacing now, restless. Fresh from Phase 1 he was shedding the tremors and it left him feeling powerful, like they'd swapped out the usual slow burn diesel in his veins for a dose of liquid nitro. The first hour was always problematic, adrenaline and aggression. Not much could put him down right now. The perfect killing machine and more than willing to follow through. He didn't know what effect the doc was going for this time, but 042 was awesome, supercharged. With each new batch of chemical go-juice pushed into his veins it was only getting worse, driving him deeper. 042 was slowly losing himself and there was no one, no anchor for him to set his line to and hold on. He had forgotten what normal should feel like.

He snarled, teeth flashing, and that was enough to get him censured. It took all four of them and a metal baton snug on his adam's apple to press him tight against the concrete wall. There was a man on each wrist, holding fast with throats clicking and blood pounding. He could hear it and for one horrible moment he wanted to taste it, rip the pulse from their bodies and bathe in the red. Someone was shouting.

"042! Fuck! 042, pull yourself together," one guard was yelling inches from his face.

042 blinked.

A small triangular piece of paper was held up, obscuring his vision of the bruised and battered security staff.

"Get the X5's," someone said urgently. "No, not that one. He'll only make it worse."

042's attention was fixed on the small photo, faded image so familiar even though his muddled mind was having trouble placing it. A gangly little boy all of eleven years old was smiling at a young version of himself like he was the kid's whole world. "Sammy," he croaked.

That one word broke the tension in the hallway, the hands on his limbs holding a little less harshly.

042 took a deep breath and the back of his head hit the concrete. He groaned.

"You with me, 042," the man on his left arm asked.

He nodded. The visual reminder he'd once kept in his wallet was more than enough to get him to back down, stand quietly for the shackles and the tests. The kid was better off without him anyways, always had been. 042 just was too selfish to see it until it'd been too late.

Four pairs of eyes scrutinized if he was lucid enough to be moved under his own power. 042 set his jaw and shook them off.


	4. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> White hot fury spiked through him. "I'm doing this with or without you," he snarled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Eyes Only hack introduction was pulled directly from Dark Angel, S01E01 Pilot.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/housefullofbooks/28296516303/in/photostream/)

2019

Almost four months into his investigation Sam's little pile of facts was woefully limited. He knew one thing for certain. The people who had Dean were somehow related to a company called Manticore, owned by a shell company that was owned by a shell company and so on and so forth. He also had the service record for a Donald Lydecker and the name of a doctor that might have been involved in the program's inception. At first, he had wanted to believe there was some creature out there with the head of a man and the body of a lion eating people and using everyone else for the cover-up, but nothing he dug up even remotely suggested a monster was involved. There were surprisingly few dead bodies involved. Instead, he found bits and pieces of what was beginning to look like a comic book plot, straight out of the pages of Spiderman or X-Men. There were rumors, few and vague but rumors all the same, that the military was creating super soldiers. It sounded insane. Something a crackpot conspiracy theorist would dream up while writing a treatise on the many uses of tinfoil hats. The thing was, Sam was actually putting together a pretty convincing picture that suggested those rumors might have some truth to them.

Sam peered out at the dilapidated neighborhood crawling by outside the windshield. He was running down a lead now. A lab tech was willing to talk. The slimy little man was more interested in the number of zeros in his payoff than helping people, but Sam had the money to burn and the guy seemed desperate for the funds. He had more important things to think about than what would be left in his bank account after tonight. If this tip led to his long-lost brother he'd sign whatever check the guy wanted. His snitch had chosen the shadiest shady part of town, though. It was so sketchy Sam didn't want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in the area, not without someone to watch his back. His opinion was only strengthened when he saw an abandoned clinic at the address he'd been given.

They hadn't even got past the preliminaries or even moved on from mutual confirmation of identity to actual fucking names before there was the squealing of tires, the rat-tat-tat of small arms fire followed by the explosion of breaking glass and three red holes appeared in the other man's shirt. The clinic was riddled with bullets and then the quiet descended as the booming gangsta music faded into the distance. Sam took one look at the bloody foam coming out of the snitch's throat along with the deep black blood gushing from a hole in the guys left side and knew it was a lost cause. Massive internal bleeding was going to kill him long before any overtaxed emergency room staff would be able to do anything about it. Sam had been on his way to a law degree, not an MD, but knew his chances of getting anything out of the guy were slim. The snitch was unconscious, half-way to dead. It was a long shot, but he had to try.

Sam slapped the guy around a bit. "C'mon, wake up you asshole," he yelled, breaking off into a coughing fit when his adrenaline spiked and his heart rate climbed. The guy's head lolled, neck muscles lacking all tone. Lost fucking cause.

He shook his head in disbelief. Of all the stupid dumb luck, the man had to get killed by a gangbanger's stray bullet before Sam could get anything out of him. He'd gotten a glimpse of their tattoos and gleaming gold teeth in his dive to the floor. Assholes couldn't have waited five fucking minutes to come screaming through here guns blazing? Sam shook his head in disgust. Turns out, the big scary corporate project hadn't needed to lift a finger to protect their little secret. Petty criminals with guns had done it for them. He stooped down to grab the folded papers sticking out of the man's coat pocket. He was careful to steer clear of the blood slowly expanding in a pool on the linoleum. The last thing Sam needed was for the police to have even more reasons to be looking for him. He pocketed the papers without looking too closely at the text. The snitch hadn't said much of anything before the drive-by took him out, but he had confirmed he brought everything Sam asked about. He could only hope the papers would tell him something useful since the source was not dead. He checked the neck. Yep. Doornail.

When he got back to the relative safety of his stolen car, he checked his phone for messages. There were a couple texts from Charlie. The worry wart had gotten impatient and wanted to know if he was alright, like he hadn't sent her something a half second after he'd parked. He sent her a little reassurance that he was still breathing and confirmed that the snitch wasn't. She didn't like the news that the guy was dead, calling it highly inconvenient and inconsiderate of the man to die before he'd spilled his guts. Sam had to laugh at that.

He also found a voicemail from a blocked number. He assumed it was from earlier, when the little worm had nearly lost his cool and left before Sam could show up. He'd perfected the art of talking fast in middle school, though. The snitch hadn't stood a chance when he'd called him back and convinced the man to stick around for the meet. Sam dialed the service and waited with a grin, expecting the guy to be whining into his ear about extra money. He wasn't.

It was Dean, clear as day, "Sam, stop what you're doing. Man, leave it alone. These people are very serious. You don't want to fuck around with this. Please, I don't want anything to happen to you."

Sam stopped breathing. The message was concise and held very little real information, but it did tell him two things. One, he was on to something, and two, Dean was still out there, alive. Months of nothing, not a word from his contacts or a hint of recent footage since Charlie had first shown him those videos and now he had Dean's voice on his phone. He didn't know what to make of it. Was he choosing to stay away for some reason? Was he protecting someone? Had someone forced him to make that call? Was he being hurt, right now while Sam sat like an idiot in his car? And why did his brother sound so casual? It was like he was in the process of ordering a burger, not a hint of true concern in his tone.

He fumbled the device when the message ended, eager to put Charlie on the trail Dean had just left for them. She picked up on the second ring.

"Charlie. Charlie. Can you hear me," he said excitedly.

Charlie's reply sounded fond but exasperated, "It's a cellphone, Samsters, not a walkie talkie. Now, what's got your panties in a twist?"

Sam got the car heading in the right direction as he babbled, "Can you track my last call? Do you have a way to do that? Please say yes." He felt jittery with the need to do something, anything more than just drive back to Bobby's. It was a tedious task with no friend in the copilot's seat to help pass the time.

"Sure, I can do that, easy peezy. I think. Wait, why?"

"I got a call. From Dean. I need to know where it came from. Please," he begged. Since the initial videos Charlie had uncovered a project name, Manticore, but he didn't know where it was based or how it was funded. His hopes had plummeted when she also revealed that some of the videos of Dean might not have been Dean. Many of the videos of his younger self had been date stamped within the last couple years, and the file numbers hadn't matched either. Maybe none of it was Dean. Maybe Dean had been dead this whole time. Well, that had been an option until a few minutes ago. Sam wasn't going to accept any other possibility.

"Oh, I almost forgot. I think I made a friend today," Charlie cooed.

"Good for you," he replied, not understanding why she was telling him.

"No, silly. He runs that nifty resistance network. You know, Eyes Only? He contacted me. At least, he sounds like a he. Anyways, he's looking into Manticore as well and noticed me snooping. He wants to share info," she explained, sounding eminently pleased with this turn of events.

"And you said no, right," Sam confirmed. He didn't need another computer jockey to keep track of. Charlie drew enough trouble as it was.

"I didn't say yes. He told me right off that there are at least two main facilities and a handful of other satellite labs. Not to mention the list of former employees he waved under my nose. That isn't much better than we have right now, but, Sam, he's got a lot more than that. I think this is worth exploring. Who knows, he may give us the plans to the Death Star," Charlie urged.

She had a point. If this was as big as he was beginning to think, he could probably use whatever allies she could toss his way. Knowing Winchester luck, it was actually worse than it looked. "Listen, Bobby's is two hours away. I'll think on it and call you when I get there," he said, ending the call. He only felt a little guilty for cutting her off.

By the time he was pulling up in front of the house, his phone had chimed the receipt of several text messages and one weather alert. He'd been lying when he said two hours. A sane man driving at sane speeds would have taken two hours, but Sam had left sane on the roadside years ago and he made the drive in a little over one. The yard was quiet when he pulled in and Rumsfeld IV barely huffed as he drove up. She wasn't much of a guard dog, just some stray he'd picked up on the side of the road for a little company. She looked and sounded fierce, but slobber was the dog's most dangerous weapon.

"Hey, Rummy," he cooed, ruffling the fur on the big dog's neck.

The mutt's massive tongue lolled out of her mouth, dripping drool onto the porch that Sam ignored as he unlocked the front door. He stumbled a bit when the dog butted his thigh in retaliation and then strutted inside and flopped onto the big area rug in the middle of the kitchen floor like she owned the place. He couldn't argue with the animal. Rummy spent a lot more time here than Sam did, and if possession was nine-tenths of the law then the human was just visiting anyways.

He tossed her a treat to head off the grumbling before it started while he got the food out of the pantry, the dog kibble sitting right next to his canned soups and beans. He cracked open a can of warm pilsner and savored the piss-water as he listened to the sounds of a happy dog near his feet. His enjoyment was based more on sense memory than the actual taste, but he'd gotten used to it. The good stuff was difficult to find. He was not looking to get drunk anyways. Sam just needed a little chemical help unwinding. He was drawn tight, prime for action and he had nothing to fight, or fuck. Jesus. He'd kill for a good lead right about now.

He waited until after dinner, cold franks and beans straight out of the can, to consider Charlie and her notion. Sam wanted to believe Eyes Only could help, he really did. Sam had seen a few of his transmissions. The ones that had been shared online by the activist's devotees, 'Do not attempt to adjust your set. This is a Streaming Freedom Video Bulletin. The cable hack will last exactly sixty seconds. It cannot be traced, it cannot be stopped, and it is the only free voice left in the city.' He wanted to believe it was as easy as tracking down this Eyes Only and finding out everything the guy had on the subject of Manticore, but things were never that easy. Good things just didn't happen to Winchesters. If this guy had information he wanted to share, there had to be a bitch of a catch somewhere. Sam just hadn't found it yet. So, when he called her back, voice loose and easy from the touch of alcohol in his system, Sam tried to sound optimistic. "Did you track the call yet," he asked instead of an opener. No, 'so how was your last couple of hours', left in him.

Charlie's tone was bright, excited even, "Ages ago, silly man." She got off on the technical stuff more than Sam ever had, but he wasn't far behind. He'd developed some useful instincts, student threatening to surpass the teacher, when hacking government databases. Tracking phone calls through their twisty paths in cyberspace was still iffy, though, and Charlie could do that with her eyes closed. "I got as far as a county in Wyoming, Samsters. Best I could do. I'll send you the deets."

Sam nodded, throat tight. Fucking Wyoming. "Thanks, Charlie," he said, sounding like someone had just taken away his favorite vegetable roaster.

"We'll find him," she reassured him. Charlie's optimism knew no bounds. Sam suspected that was why Dean had called her the little sister he never wanted, because he in fact actually did.

"I'm just afraid I'll have to bury his corpse at the end of this," he admitted. Rummy nudged him, a subtle reminder that she was being ignored.

"Dean wouldn't let that happen," she replied, and he noticed that for the first time she didn't sound all that confident in her words.

Sam changed the subject, uncomfortable with the idea that little Miss Sunshine was losing some of her shine after all. "I, uh, gave your suggestion some thought," he began.

"You mean Eyes Only? Well, what do you say," Charlie chimed in, reminding him of the Supernatural fangirls he'd come across over the years and he was very glad her enthusiasm wasn't directed his way. She was way too excited at the prospect of getting to work with the guy.

He shuddered when that led him to think of Becky. He really never wanted to see her again. Getting dosed with some demon love potion and waking up half naked, tied down, and newly married without any idea what the hell was going on would send any guy screaming for the hills. "Yeah. If you think he can help," he offered. He didn't know what he was going to say next because Jody's truck, with the word 'Sheriff' stenciled on the side, pulled up outside and Rummy started howling from the kitchen. "If you could give me his number or something, I could really use his help. I've got to go, though. Jody's at the door," he told Charlie when he heard Sheriff Mills step onto his porch and knock smartly on the front door.

"Sure thing," she said. There would be a few more text messages on his phone the next time he checked it. She offered a few more words of comfort, little lies about how Winchesters always pulled through. Then she hung up, leaving Sam alone in his renovated kitchen with Rummy drooling all over his boots and Sheriff Jody Mills on his porch.

He threw the dog a rawhide bone in a big to keep her quiet for about a minute. There were days he seriously considered renaming the mutt Hoover. She literally inhaled anything edible and small enough that she didn't think she'd choke on it, no chewing involved. Choking, hacking, and vomiting had been, though, on numerous occasions. He left Rummy to it while he answered the door, opening it wide to reveal Jody's smiling face.

"Sam Winchester. Lenny saw you on the way in and I just had to come for a visit," Jody said brightly.

Sam didn't bother to ask who Lenny was. It could be anyone and if she started talking about Sioux Falls gossip he'd be listening to her talk most of the way through the night. "Jody, come on in," he greeted her warmly. Gossip or no, she was always welcome.

"You disappeared from my warrants list," she remarked. "Again."

"Yeah, well, Charlie's the best," he explained, rubbing the back of his neck.

Jody walked around him to pour herself a cup of the coffee he'd forgotten all about. "Good," she replied and leaned back against the counter as she sipped.

Sam poured himself a generous cup, piling on the cream and sugar to make it palatable. The beans just weren't the same these days. "Something wrong," he asked, still not quite sure why she'd driven out here as soon as he entered the city limits. What couldn't have waited until the morning?

Jody looked sheepish. "I was hoping to see your brother," she said and he knew what she meant. "How are you holding up?"

"I miss him. So damned much," he said, fighting the catch at the back of his throat.

Suddenly, he found his face smooshed into her shoulder as Jody yanked him down to her height and squeezed him tight. "I know, honey," she soothed. "Had some suit types sniffing around the office the other day," she said, patting his back. If anyone could be a motherly figure to Sam right now it would be Jody. He was helpless against the onslaught of her matronly mercy. "Whatever you're doing, kiddo, it's working," she informed him.

He rolled his eyes at the nickname, but returned the embrace. The closest person to a mother he had known as a child was missing and it was his fault. He was simply too weak to refuse the matronly comfort. He hadn't noticed just how much Dean had done to take care of him until he had to take over doing it for himself again. "Not close enough," he replied. "Not yet." Miles to go before he could sleep.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

"Sam, stop what you're doing. Man, leave it alone. These people are very serious. You don't want to fuck around with this. Please, I don't want anything to happen to you," 042 said over the sat phone. He waited until he was sure the recording had stopped, then he cleared his throat and asked, "How'd that sound?"

"Very good, 042," the Major praised over the radio. "You do realize if Sam gets any closer we will have to bring him in?"

He swallowed and nodded, "Understood." He did. A government black military project couldn't run without secrecy and maintaining that secrecy was never a pleasant undertaking. Sacrifices had to be made. He knew that first hand. "Is there anything else?"

The connection hissed before her reply came out clearly, "Do your job and return home." In other words, eliminate the target and get his ass back to base. Command had made it crystal clear the SEALs were expendable, even more than he was.

He grimaced and replied, "Copy that," and he thought he knew what she meant. Manticore never used the idea of home, not really. The few times he'd heard it the desk jockey in question had been referring to psyops. It seemed his stock was a bit defective and all three, 042 and his two juvenile doppelgangers, had racked up the loyalty rewards points with those brain bleachers. Yippee.

042 hung up the sat phone, handed it back to the Corporal, and raised the volume on the designated mission channel. It was a busy field today and there was a lot of chatter on the radio for him to follow. They had him working with a SEAL team and they were currently chatting over the airwaves while he handled the minor crisis brewing back in the states. The SEALs hadn't asked how one man could solve all of their problems. They just accepted that somehow the military had come up with a way to extract them, that they'd make it home in one piece. 042 knew differently. He knew these men wouldn't stand a chance if the politician's or his own superiors altered his orders and he was in no position to quibble with any of it. They were all human capital, easily replaced. Any of the X5's could do his job just as well, if not more efficiently. He had no illusions. The fact that 042 had been sent on this mission meant it was a low priority, high-risk situation.

Later, when the dawn was rising over the horizon, lighting the dunes on fire, all five were safely returned from enemy lines. He reported his own targets eliminated, package acquired, minor damage incurred. The bullet hole deep in the meat of his leg had stopped sluggishly seeping sometime during his debriefing. It was barely a scratch but he was favoring that leg as he climbed into the humvee next to the field handler. He kind of liked the guy, easy going and dependable. They'd gotten along well.

The man looked at the dark stain on his camo's disapprovingly. "Looks like you're due for a tuneup, 042. Enjoy yourself tonight," he told him dryly as they drove off.

Dammit.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Sam had a journal. Its leather cover was beaten half to hell and faded in odd splotches where various liquids had come in contact with it. There was even one corner where he'd bled on it and hadn't figured it out until the stain had set. It wasn't a hunting journal. He had his database for that. This was more personal, his private journal. Lately, it had become a chronicle of all the ways he had failed Dean, every dead end, every false lead. Every single moment of his search for his brother was painstakingly detailed in his journal. He even had an entry for Dean's mysterious phone call, as much as he could remember scribbled out in his haste so he wouldn't forget anything that could later help him. So when Eyes Only had offered to meet, Sam grabbed two things to take with him, the journal and his laptop.

What he didn't expect was a dorky looking guy in a wheelchair to show up seemingly all by himself. True, it didn't do anything to dim his admiration of Eyes Only, but the hardware was unexpected. Well, the wheelchair plus the first words that came out of his mouth. "My name is Logan Cale. Eyes Only tells me you are interested in Manticore," he began.

He decided not to call the guy on his fib. If Logan wanted to hold onto anonymity, Sam was not going to be the one to shatter the illusion. "Sam," he replied.

"Right. Winchester, correct? Don't worry, I've seen the whole file," he smirked. "It looks like whatever crime this Agent Henrikson couldn't solve got pinned to your case for no logical reason. I'm curious, how did you piss him off?"

Sam's cheeks colored. "It's a long story. Essentially, we were in town and a doppelganger of my brother sliced up a friend of mine from Stanford. Henrickson wouldn't accept the dead body of the asshole as proof that Dean was innocent. Henrikson was a good agent. He just got obsessed with explaining the unexplainable and he was not given all the facts," he explained.

Logan looked amused with his answer, like he knew Sam was lying through his teeth. If he'd read through the entire FBI file like he had claimed, that wasn't surprising. "Manticore is dangerous and once they know you're digging into them you'll always be looking over your shoulder," he said instead.

Sam shook his head. "They were after me before I even started. Besides, they have my brother," he said. No way in hell was he giving up on Dean, even if it landed him in Hell, again.

Logan perked up, suddenly more than slightly interested. "Your brother," he repeated. "Now, why would you think that? They don't exactly go around kidnapping people."

Sam tapped his messenger bag unconsciously. "No, they don't," he said. "But, I have videos and lab reports that tell me they had him as recently as three years ago and as early as ten years old. It's some seriously messed up stuff to do to a little kid."

Logan nodded, "Yeah, that sounds like them. How much do you know? I can fill you in on some of it. The rest, well." He shrugged, but Sam was just happy to see that the man was beginning to believe him.

"Listen, I know Eyes Only is very interested in this. I can help," he offered.

Logan seemed to consider Sam and then nodded, "Alright. Let's start with what you know."

He took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth. It didn't take long for his laptop to boot, he'd left it on standby. Three frame shots from three different videos were already open on the screen. The first was from the oldest video he had found. The second was from a video of a teenaged Dean, but the file name had been different than the others and the date had been wonky. He distinctly remembered playing house with Amelia while a very adult Dean had been stuck in Purgatory the year the video claimed to have been shot. The last picture was of Dean on a treadmill. He couldn't look at any of the others right this moment, and keep his cool long enough to convince Logan to help him. He turned the computer around, explained what he could, and hoped for the best.

Logan's eyes widened. He picked up a handset. "Max, you seeing this," he asked the person on the other end.

Sam was kicking himself. That was a shortwave walkie and if the person on the other end had line of sight he'd probably had a gun sight trained on him this whole time. Stupid. Stupid. He didn't hear the reply. The sound was routed through an earbud instead of the speaker on the front of the handset. Something was up, though and he waited, curious.

"Well, then get down here and ask him yourself," Logan said into the mic.

A girl, dressed in black leathers and so smoking hot Sam couldn't help the long up and down look he gave her before blushing and turning his head, hurried down a ladder from the catwalk above them. He really should have considered that waitresses offer yesterday on the way here. She stomped up to the table and braced her hands on the surface, getting a better look at the pictures. Her eyes narrowed and then she turned a stormy face on Sam, "Why are you here?"

"I'm looking for my brother," he replied, confused. He'd already said that.

She pointed to the screen. "That's not your brother. Who do you work for?"

Sam reached back to dig his wallet from his back pocket. They both drew guns on him. "Easy, I just wanted to show you a picture I have in my wallet," he explained.

She gestured with the gun, "Stand up and turn around."

He did, keeping his hands in plain sight and empty, fingers splayed. He was trusting them. This was for Dean. It was always for Dean. "Back pocket, left side." Someone relieved him of it and he turned around. "Just open it. You'll see what I mean," he urged and put his hands down. This hulking bodyguard type had frisked him at the door. He wasn't carrying.

The small tattered picture in his wallet was of a gangly seventeen-year-old Sam sitting on the hood of the Impala closely beside his adonis of a twenty-one-year-old brother. Back before Bobby had died, before Stanford. He remembered pretty much always being jealous of Dean's good looks, only rivaling those sculpted good looks when his soulless self had taken up weightlifting in the wee hours of the night. This picture was his favorite. Dean's smile was wide and open and genuine. He hadn't gotten to see that much afterward, especially not after Dean's tour in Hell and not after Sam's own time in the Cage. Life had beaten them both down by then and his brother's smiles had worn thin and brittle those last years.

"Dean, he, uh… I haven't seen him in five years," he admitted. God, it hurt just thinking about that night. Did Dean still believe the things he had spat during the height of his anger? Did Sam? "I thought… I thought he was just avoiding me, or dead. I don't know if this isn't worse. What I saw," he stopped there.

The girl sat down. "He's not too young to be a donor. But, he'da been a snotty brat at the time."

Sam looked at Logan like, 'translate please?'

Logan pulled the laptop to him and started typing. "Well, I'm sold," he announced.

Sam shook his head, "No, nuh-uh, you are not cutting me out."

"Sorry, Sammy," the girl snarked, "End of the line. We got it from here." She got up from the table and started walking away.

White hot fury spiked through him. "I'm doing this with or without you," he snarled. Right this moment would have been a good time to pull a gun. It's what Dean would have done. He didn't have one, though. His hands curled into fists at his sides, impotent, as he stood to his full height and loomed over wheelchair Logan. "I know a few things about secrets so yours is safe with me," he told the man, "but don't think for one goddamn second I'm going to walk away."

The girl continued walking.

"Did I mention he called me two days ago," he tried.

She stopped walking like she'd reached the end of a rope, yanked to a stop and straining against the pull on her collar.

He grinned darkly, almost cruel. Gotcha. This was personal for them too.

She stormed back over, "Give me your phone."

He turned out his pockets. No phone. "I'm not that stupid," he informed her. "Let me in and I'll lay it all out for you." He pointed to the flash drive Logan had discreetly plugged into his laptop hoping Sam wouldn't notice. "That is only a fraction of what I know." It wasn't even all of the files from the hard drive. He pointed to his own temple. "The rest is up here."

Logan sighed. "Tricky tricky. If we agree to this, Max is in charge of the field work," he said, jerking his head in the girl's direction. So that was Max. He should have known.

Sam wanted to argue, wanted to start yelling about how he would be the one to yank his brother out of the fire. How this time he was actually going to save the stubborn ass with his own two hands for once, not some feathered dick or his smooth talking fanger replacement. But, he didn't. They were letting him in. He could make his case for a more active role later. He nodded. "Yeah, alright," he replied.

Logan got his chair moving, hands sliding along the wheels as he picked a clear path through the detritus. When Sam didn't move to follow he stopped and turned to quirk an eyebrow at him, "You coming?"

It turned out Logan Cale is one of The Cales. In a country on its last legs, his fancy little Prius had been modified for a paraplegic. Logan drove and it was apparent by the relaxed way he did it that he practiced a lot or he'd been at it a while. They chatted about nonsense things while the girl, Max, became a silent shadow in the back seat. He wouldn't have even known she was back there if he hadn't watched her slip back there himself. He wondered where he would be if things had been different. Would be still be sitting in the Impala's passenger seat complaining about Dean's 'extra onions'? There had been a time he would have done anything not to end up like that, always on the road and ducking the cops. Now, well, he wasn't so sure.

They were munching on yogurt, an expensive rarity these days, when Logan offered, "You can stay here tonight. I've got extra beds."

Sam had been expecting it. Why else would the man take him home at this hour? Hack and slash? If they had planned murder he supposed he wouldn't be standing in the guy's home. The warehouse would have been easier to clean. He cleared his throat. "Thanks," he said, looking around at the apartment. It had a decided eastern flavor to it, making it feel more open and homey than the bunker had ever been able to manage. "I don't mean to push, but can we talk about Manticore now," he queried.

Logan wheeled over, a mug of hot tea held tightly in one hand. "We should wait for Max. She knows a lot more than I do. I'll let her do the explaining. She should be here for this anyways," he said wistfully, looking towards the other room where Max was pacing and looking very irritated with whoever was on the other end of her cell phone.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

1989

"He needs to know what's out there," John insisted.

Bobby countered with, "That's what books are for, John," sounding frustrated and a little bit angry. He had one arm under little Sammy who hadn't yet figured out what was going on, though at six years old it wouldn't be long before he was bawling his eyes out.

"I can handle a phouka with one hand tied behind my back. I'll have no trouble wrangling Dean if things go sideways," he stated and then quickly added, "Which they won't." He was already halfway out the door, Dean trailing behind him. "C'mon, son."

That is, Dean was behind him until it sunk in what exactly was happening. When he looked back the kid was nowhere near Bobby's front door. His feet seemed rooted in the hallway, eyes wide.

John could practically see the wheels turning in the boy’s head and he knew this was fixing to be a fight. "Dean, get your ass to the car," he barked, hoping to get gone before Sam caught on and made this even more difficult.

"Now, John," Bobby started.

Dean asked quietly, "We leaving Sammy behind?" He was edging over to where Bobby was standing with the littler boy in his arms and Sam had just figured it out. Dean's tone nearly broke John's heart because it sounded like betrayal.

"Dean," Sam squealed, nearly deafening the gruff hunter holding him.

Bobby cursed, "Balls," and did his best to keep a good grip on the wriggling tyke in his arms. Sam wasn’t making it easy for him, doing his best to break free and nose dive to the floor.

"Dean," John said sharply, his voice cutting through his younger son's sobbing. "Sam'll be fine. Bobby'll take good care of'im. This hunt's too dangerous," he explained. He didn't stick around for additional arguments or questions. "Get in the car," he ordered and stomped outside to lead by example. He climbed into the driver's seat and waited, drumming his fingers on the shining black paint.

He had no idea what his oldest did to smooth things over, but in less time than it took for his patience to run out the kid was scrambling into the passenger seat. Dean's lip wobbled but the boy put on a brave face for his baby brother, whose big hazel eyes weren’t leaving him. As if convinced, Dean was coming back. This would be a first for all three of them. John was usually the one that put his boys in the rearview, leaving the boys to wait out his hunts in whatever hole he’d bothered secure for them. The routine was broken and even John knew that the little ones didn’t deal with that well. Bobby watched from the porch as the Impala maneuvered between the rusting hulks of discarded cars. Sam was still crying, but he was doing it quietly and had ceased struggling against the other man's grasp. Good boy, John thought. My good little boy.

Dean had buckled his seatbelt and resolutely told him, "I'm ready," like he needed to say it to make it true. His eyes remained fastened on the rear window until Bobby’s salvage yard vanished in the distance. His oldest was a different breed. Hell, he was sure the kid was technically a different species. John hardly ever knew what to expect from him.

The phouka turned out to be a brag, which meant the banishing he'd chosen didn't take. The little magic cleansing he worked pretty much pissed it off, something he could have done without. They had both received a few new bruises to add to their collection courtesy of the murderous donkey beast by the time Dean managed to get his hands on a piece of iron and drove it straight through the thing's heart. The problem was the kid kept going. He pulled the rebar free of the brag's breast and somehow left it lodged deep in the thing’s cranium, right through the little depression over one of the eyes. John watched, horrified, as ten-year-old limbs carved into the side of the carcass and began ripping the heart free, covered in blood from head to toe.

John raised his gun, the one with silver bullets that he had started keeping on his hip. He aimed center mass on that small chest, finger squeezing. It was so difficult. For all the reasons that truly mattered Dean was his, his oldest son. The little boy his Mary had loved so fiercely. She'd always been so proud of him. John forced himself to look at the red ruin of the Brag corpse and his own son shoulder deep in the ripped flesh, digging with his bare fingers like he was searching for gold. Dean may not be something supernatural but that didn't make him any less of a monster than what they hunted. He wasn’t completely human, and John was running out of excuses for him. Not when the boy could do so many things at an age that most children were struggling to tackle at twenty-two, or with that look he’d always seemed to have in his eyes, like he knew far more than he should, was far older than he was. Not with the way he healed so conveniently fast, or the fact that he could, at only ten years old, lift his own weight in gear and carry it out to the car without complaining. John was raising a monster. A freak. A damned guard dog on two legs. He told himself that he should put Dean down before he turned on John and his real son. He needed to do it now while he still had the chance. If he waited much longer, let the kid get any older he might not be able to get the drop on him. If this thing he was raising turned on them… but, he couldn't do it. Even when he closed his eyes and tried very hard to think of Dean as something… else, he still couldn't do it. He told himself that he needed someone to take care of Sammy until the tyke was old enough to handle a day or two alone. That was the only reason that he finally blew out a breath and lowered the gun. Maybe next year. One more year. Sam might be mature enough then. His hands shook as he put the piece away, tucked it into its hiding place.

Dean didn't seem to notice how close he had come to death by his own father's hand. His smile was bright, though bloodstained, when he proudly held up the glistening organ for his inspection. Thank god it wasn’t still beating. John couldn't bring himself to do more than grunt a half-hearted praise before he ordered to kid to clean off in the stream nearby, eager to be rid of the gruesome sight. He might throw up if he had to look at the blood-soaked ten-year-old any longer. The picture Dean made was enough to give John nightmares, and he’d seen some messed up stuff since Mary died. The carcass was still warm and twitching while the boy obediently walked off into the night in search of the small stream they’d stumbled on earlier. The boy’s eyes easily adjusting to the gloom around him. John was already deep into planning the clean-up, sizing up the donkey-sized brag for a funeral pyre.

John was so deep in thought that he missed the way Dean's proud grin had fallen at his swift dismissal, a frown tilting his lips before he hid the hurt behind the mask he had been using more and more frequently as he got older and began to realize that something wasn’t right with their little family. Dean had seen how other fathers treated their sons and he’d watched John mimic that behavior sometimes with Sam. He was grateful for the effort, as rare as it was. His brother craved normal, craved school and a mom and a dog far more keenly than Dean ever would. It was just sometimes, when he let himself dwell on it, he wished John would make the effort to pretend with him too. Not that it would make an impact on their lives in the slightest. Dean still had a job to do. Taking care of Sammy. He just hoped he hadn’t screwed up this hunt, his first. He wanted to do it again. Dean had finally found something he was really good at.

John also didn't notice the wounds littering the boy's arms until they'd rumbled into Bobby's junkyard and Dean hopped out of the Impala. Sam had shot out of the old house like a rocket, latching on to his brother with a, "Deeeaannn!"

The stark contrast between the angry red gashes on Dean’s forearms and Sam’s pristine white sleep shirt had been glaringly obvious. Still, Sam was far too quick to recognize the marks for what they were. John found himself on the business end of Bobby's shotgun, as Dean frantically tried to calm his worried little mother-hen of a brother.

"Care to explain why your boy is tore up half to hell and you don’t look like ya got a scratch on ya," Bobby prompted him.

He heard Dean mumble something about ribs to Sam and it appeared to calm the boy down a bit, though he was still trying to drag his larger brother into the house to get patched up. The two disappeared into the house while John kept his hands in plain sight and his feet firmly rooted in the mud in front of the porch. Not even Rumsfeld seemed pleased to see him right that moment.

"He’ll bounce back. It was a Brag. When the banishing didn’t stick we had to improvise. It got to Dean before I could kill it," he lied. There was no sense worrying Bobby if John wasn’t going to do anything about Dean. Not yet anyways. He’d enlist the hunter’s help when he needed it.

"He’ll bounce back? He needs stitches. I think you need to leave ‘em with me till Dean is up to traveling again," Bobby interjected.

John shook his head, "The hell I am. They are my sons and they are coming with me. Dean will be just fine in a few days. He’s a good soldier. Maybe next time he’ll get out of the way a little faster."

Bobby looked flabbergasted. "Next time? The hell there will be a next time," he told him.

"Dean! Get your brother and get out here now! We’re leaving," he barked loud enough to wake the dead.

Bobby pumped the shotgun, chambering a shell.

Dean flew around Bobby’s legs, dragging Sam and his backpack with him. His forearms were wrapped in thick white bandages from elbow to wrist. He mumbled, "Yes, sir," and bundled the both of them into the back of the Impala.

John smirked, "I think we’ll be going now."

"I won’t be party to this. You insist in taking a ten-year-old on hunts then you better find somewhere else to dump Sam," Bobby told him, hoping he would reconsider. John was going to get Dean killed, soon, and Bobby loved the boys too much to watch that go down.

His gamble bit him in the ass. John said, "Sure," and the Impala rumbled to life, disappearing into the junkyard like a massive steel shadow. He had no way of knowing he wouldn't see the little family again for a long time.

"Balls," Bobby grumbled.


	5. Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Yes, me. Whatever Dean is, he isn't your brother. I'm even betting he's like me, at least a little," Max told him.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

It was a Tuesday. Later, 042 would remember that someone somewhere had put a curse on Tuesdays. Sammy had told him a preposterously truncated version of the kid's personal groundhog day and neither held any fondness for that day of the week since. One look at his traumatized little brother clinging to his arm like he would drop dead at any moment had told him plenty. The fact that 042 couldn't even take a shit without having to constantly reassure the kid he was still breathing, every five seconds, had cinched it. He recalled singing, as annoyingly off-key as he could stand, every time they were out of sight of each other, Sam practically plastered to the flimsy motel door separating them. That had lasted for months, long after that desperately broken look had left his brother's eyes. Brother. There were days he forgot about that, his memories of the outside were distant.

This Tuesday 042 woke like a sleeper coming out of a fog, his brain heavy and uncooperative. Psyops had done a number on him that last time he had been forced to endure their special brand of hospitality, the word diabolical came to mind. It was why his memory was all fucked up. He'd been slowly breaking the grip their operatives had wrapped around his neurons ever since, but it wasn't happening fast enough. Four months later and he just about had it figured out, but he was running out of time. He'd been reprogrammed by Manticore's finest. She'd reached in and yanked everything that had made 042 the man he had been right out of him, or maybe just spackled it over. The ordeal had cost him years of wasted time and he probably wouldn't get it all back this time. It wasn't that he didn't remember who he was. He just didn't give a damn. The images in 042's head were divorced from his own identity and the emotions they'd once evoked. Merely erasing his memories had proved a failure the first couple times they tried it. That method had only secured his unflinching loyalty for a couple days until he somehow bucked the programming and everything had come roaring back. Sammy had come roaring back. Now the kid was a picture in his head, an idea, but he lacked the context for the concept. Even so, something inside of himself was telling him that he wouldn't feel right until 042 was back at his side.

The last vestiges of Manticore control were still tugging at him as he slipped the paper clip out of his mouth. He ignored the steady thrum to obey as he fit it to the keyhole and worked the lock open. 042 was afraid, though he'd never admit it. Do or die, eh? The heavy cell door opened smoothly and his grin of triumph was bright in the dark hours of the morning. The hallway was bathed in the low blue glow of security lighting, providing some cover. This time of the day the guard patrols would be at only a third of the daytime strength. All the good little X5's would be locked in their cells. It was the perfect time for a little hell raising. He took down the two sloppy guards on the way to the control room and a third once he got there. She was sitting on her fat ass in the security control room. He knocked her out and dumped her in a heap in the corner.

For a moment all 042 could do was stare at screen after screen of gray scale camera footage with no small amount of glee. Yahtzee! He was an intrepid shade thief and he'd just hit the jackpot. As much as he'd love to sit here and play god with the system, he'd have to go somewhere else to find what he'd been after years ago. He was nothing if not persistent. It was laughably easy to set up a video feed loop to cover his movements. Then he was out the door, flying down the hallways in a race against the clock. He had about twenty minutes before they switched to bright fluorescent lighting, twenty minutes until shift change. If he got lucky for once in his miserable life, it just might be enough.

There was only one bright spot in his endless rounds of testing. 042 had gotten a detailed look at just about every lab on the second floor and he'd found a weak spot in the one closest to the stairwell on the north side. Most of the employees that he had contact with followed the Manticore security protocols to the letter. There was one, a skinny slob of a man, that could barely remember to eat between testing much less adhere to the tedious precautions outlined in the protocols. It was almost comical that the room belonged to the very doctor that had been using 042 as a guinea pig for who knows how long. He was a brilliant man, a bit lacking in morals but brilliant nonetheless. There was one downfall of many brilliant people, and this person in particular. The little things tended to fall by the wayside. In this case, it was an almost pathological disregard for the proper format of passwords. It had been easy to memorize the pattern of letters the doctor used to unlock his lab computer. Most astute kindergarten kids knew not to use your own name. The only problem was, 042 had to get to the guy's lab in order to use what he knew. Hence, this little breakout he'd staged in the wee hours of the morning.

It took him ten precious minutes to locate his own file, adding 494's on a whim, and get it copied to the flash drive he found in the security control room. He wasted another ten minutes down the hall looking through the rusty old filing cabinets. He was looking for a couple of old files, ones from nearly thirty years ago. He'd searched just about every other spot in the previous weeks, one room at a time, and this was his last chance. 042 would have been almost thirteen, alone at the ass end of nowhere looking after his snot-nosed little brother. It was the second time Manticore had taken him and they'd kept him for almost a week that time. 042 was certain Dad had known, or at least suspected something by then. The old bastard had known about Sam's connection to the demon and he hadn't said a word to anyone. It stood to reason he'd known that Dean was not only not his real son, but that he'd also been mixed up in a tube like a high school chemistry project.

042 stifled his shout of glee when he finally found a drawer with the right year. Fucking finally. He yanked it open and started pulling papers out of the hanging folders inside like a madman. He only glanced at the labels while he scanned the yellowed paper stickers for keywords and hastily stuffed a few at a time into a plastic liner bag from the trash can he'd up-ended in the far corner of the room. He kept stuffing papers into it until the bag looked full to bursting, and then he did his best to tie it off. He eyed the rest of the drawer forlornly, wishing he could drag the whole cabinet back to the bunker with him. He even briefly considered trying it, but he knew he'd be lucky to escape at all. The guards on the perimeter were not this lax, not by a long shot.

By the time he returned to the lab near the stairwell, it was perilously close to the end of the guard shift. Shift change was both the most dangerous time to attempt an escape and the most likely time that he'd be able to pull it off. There would be twice as many eyes on the ground to track him if he screwed this up. At the same time, those eyes would be occupied with the hand-over to incoming personnel and all the necessary paperwork. He still believed Command had a hard-on for incident reports, non-incident reports, and just about every other type of useless waste of paper they could think up. He eased the window open, cringing at the creak of dry hinges in the chilled weather. 042 watched the analog clock on the wall with narrowed eyed, attention fixed on the second hand ticking away. He jumped when that little red bar ticked over to the next minute. Unfortunately for him, the X5's, fresh from their beds, spotted him as soon as his sneakers hit the ground. With a curse, he regained his footing and took off running. He didn't have a prayer. The dogs were already off their leashes and hot on his heels with the X-5's not far behind, but he was laughing and feeling better than he had in a long while. Today was his lucky day. It had to be. He would make it. He had to, and he let himself believe he was home free until he wasn't. He hadn't managed to avoid everyone, it turned out, and he found himself pulling a couple tranq darts from his shoulder with no small measure of consternation.

His vision started swimming pretty quickly and he felt like he needed to hurl. That would be a sedative spreading through his veins, weighing him down like a heavy wet blanket. This was not good. He wrapped the thumb stick in his bundle of paper and plastic, shoving the entire thing into the undergrowth as best he could while his body slowly shut down on him. Before the paralytic in the knock-out serum could fully take hold he was crawling away, his legs about as useful as two hunks of dead meat strapped to his waist. His fingers were scraped raw from his clambering over the packed forest floor as his panic mounted.

The boot to the side of his head finished him off, and he tumbled into the dark.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Sam was jittery, impatient, and it showed. "How do you know Charlie," he asked, needing the distraction. "I mean, I'm only here because she vouched for me," he added.

Logan looked up from his laptop, then looked back down. "She visits," he explained.

"The way she was talking, it seemed like she'd only known you for a short time," he mused, trying to figure out why she would lie. His eyes kept bouncing around, from Logan to Max to the empty room and back through the circle all over again. "Did she come to you about Dean?"

"Once, but I actually caught her trying to break into my computer first. I've never met someone so happy that she failed," Logan replied with a little smile. "She didn't figure me as Eyes Only until I told her a few days ago. You should have seen her face. Priceless."

"Yeah, she's a regular geekazoid," Sam fondly remarked, feeling immensely relieved.

"Mmhm."

He kept up the nervous pacing despite Logan grousing at him periodically to, "Please sit down." Max had been on the phone for almost twenty minutes before she ended the call. By the time she came into the room, looking at Sam like he was some incredibly interesting bug, he was very ready to demand some answers. Here he was in the same room with the supposed experts on Manticore and he still hadn't learned a speck of useful intel other than wheelie over there could out-hack the Queen. He was impressed. That was not an easy feat. Every second he wasted here, though, was another second Dean could be suffering, or worse. He could be dying and Sam wouldn't be there to save him.

Max tossed the small flip phone to Logan with a, "I left something for you. Think you can look into it?" It seemed less like a request than a statement.

Interestingly enough, Logan didn't mind. "Sure thing," he replied with a small smile. "Max, would you talk to Sam for a bit?"

"Bout what?"

"Manticore. X5's. Take your pick," Logan replied as he wheeled away.

Sam coughed and looked a little uncomfortable as she leveled a stare at him that could have stripped paint. "Umm, hi," he mumbled.

Max's curling black model-perfect hair was completely at odds with her tough-girl persona. He had this image of this petite pretty girl beating the crap out of a bunch of tough guys in a skirt and heels. "Do you even know what you're going up against," she asked.

He recovered quickly and gave her his best 'trust me' stare. "I can handle it," he replied.

He blinked and she was suddenly up in his face, traversing the nearly twenty feet between them in a second. He blinked again. Yep, that had really happened. "Are you sure about that? Cause where I'm from, they have hundreds of us," she told him. His memory supplied the word, super soldier. Those stupid sons-a-bitches had really done it. "And you don't look so hot," she said matter of factly.

That one wounded him. A part of him even believed it. He'd searched for five long years and was afraid that in the final stretch he would somehow not be good enough. Sam wasn't in top form, never would be again. The trials had not been without cost. He still did not know why he hadn't died in that church. He nearly had. His morning runs were out of the question. So was a lot of the heavy lifting he had taken on before, so no more gym. His heart wasn't in failure, but it no longer pumped like it used to. "Like you," he parroted dumbly.

"Yes, me. Whatever Dean is, he isn't your brother. I'm even betting he's like me, at least a little," Max told him. She flopped down onto the couch and got comfortable, fluffing the pillow behind her head with a shove. Then she added, "I'm sure you've heard the rumors. Genetically engineered. Super soldier. There's no enhancement serum, Sammy. X series prototypes like me were mixed up in a test tube and the closest thing I have to a mother is the surrogate that birthed me. Never met her, but I've got enough cat DNA in me that I should be sprouting whiskers. Your Dean is the spitting image of my brother Ben. With a few extra decades. He's one of us. Manticore technology."

"I don't care. Dean practically raised me. We had a fight and I said some things, things I wish to god I hadn't said. I can't leave him there thinking I meant it," Sam pleaded. He needed her to understand. Even if Dean didn't come back to him, Sam refused to permit his brother to suffer further abuse at the hands of Manticore. "Listen. I think he knew something or he suspected. When I was a kid these guys with guns came and took him away for a few days. He just went with them 'cause John told him to. Was that Manticore? I don't know anymore."

"Don't know why you're askin' me. I'm engineered, not psychic," she remarked. "That's beside the point. The point is that your boy is in a whole mess of trouble. If Manticore has had him this whole time… Five years you say? He won't be what you remember. Psyops has worked him over but good." She tipped her head back like she was remembering something and, judging by the look on her face, it wasn't pleasant.

"He's my brother," he repeated, ignoring the sense of dread lurking at the back of his mind.

"You said that before," Max said and eyed Sam closely. Then she shrugged, "Sure."

Sam tried to piece out what she'd meant. She could have meant it. Sam wasn't positive and he didn't know Max well enough to judge if she was shining him on. Eventually, he decided to roll with it and go for the objective. "Yeah, I have. Look, I'll give you everything I have. Just, don't push me out of this," he pleaded again. It was the only option he had left, beg to be kept in the loop and hope these people chose to help his brother in the end. She was holding all the cards right now, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't regret reaching out to her if he managed to get her to agree.

Max nodded and he knew he was in. Just like that. "You follow my lead," she said, leaving no room for argument. He readily agreed. "and I need anything else you know," she added, searching his face.

He reached under his shirt and pulled out the thumb drive that he'd taped to his sternum, wincing at the sting of yanked hairs and lost skin layers. "This has everything. Along with my notes. And there's some stuff in my journal from when we were kids," he added. "I can't lose him again."

She made a face, but she sat up. "Just tell me what's in there. Flipping through your personal's not my idea of a good time. Unless you got something valuable," she told him, eying the interior of the messenger bag by his feet like it could be hiding gold bullion.

"Um, times he disappeared without explanation, things he said," Sam shrugged. He'd already admitted he didn't have anything concrete.

"Like what," Max prodded, crossing her arms and tapping her foot.

He pulled out his battered leather journal, the one he'd used during Stanford, and flipped through the pages until he got to a couple entries he made towards the end of sophomore year. "He left me some strange voicemails. We weren't talking at the time, but he'd still call me sometimes. I think just to hear my recorded voice," he explained and slid the book onto the counter between them. He pointed to two entries, only a few hours apart. Dean had been inebriated, so wasted that he later claimed he hadn't made any calls that month. The man had been crying, drunk, and talking nonsense., and it was one of only a handful of times that Sam had nearly lost his resolve and contacted his older brother.

_I just wanted you to know that I'm proud of you. I've always been proud of you. You've always known I wasn't quite right. I don't know how many times you've told me we weren't brothers. Well, you were right Sam. I'm not your brother. Not really. Not by blood. But, that doesn't mean I didn't want to be. I just need you to hear that no matter what you may think of me, I was so happy for you when you got into Stanford. My Sammy, a free ride. You just never gave me the chance to say it. Right, well, I guess I'll let you get back to studying, geek boy._

Then the second entry:

_I'm not human. Never was. You never had a brother to lose._

Max gave him a look that clearly said she wasn't interested in his family bullshit. Then she scanned the page once, and a second time at a slower pace. "That's damn vague, but," she began. "I think I'll start at the beginning. Sit down. It's story time." She left the couch and made herself a steaming cup of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows. She began talking.

Sam listened as she told him about the barracks she grew up in, the thin mattresses, and the regimental upbringing. He had enough personal experience to read between the lines and recognize the complete lack of a parental presence in her life. To anyone that cared to notice, it was obvious that she dearly missed the members of her unit. He really wanted to punch someone when she got to the part about the scientists and their tests. It sounded more like torture to him and he really wished he'd known about this sooner. It wouldn't have taken much convincing to get Dean in on whatever hair-brained plan he would have cooked up to shut the place down and free the prototypes, erm kids.

When she revealed how many of her brothers and sisters died or disappeared, never heard from again, without comment or explanation, he up and began pacing. With every word, Sam's horror had grown. It was worse than he'd imagined. He bit back the urge to start angrily ranting about assholes in lab coats, but it was a close thing. His short temper and deeply ingrained sense of justice had sparked many a fight with John after he'd hit puberty. "Tell me there's some good news in all this," he asked tightly.

"Twelve of my unit escaped," Max replied. "Some were left behind. Some died in the attempt. But twelve did make it over the fence, including me, and I haven't seen any of my brothers or sisters since that night."

"So, there is no super soldier serum," he confirmed, mostly to himself. "They made kids, from scratch. You guys are amazing. I mean, all of the things that could have gone wrong and yet here you are, sitting here talking to me." He had known some of it, but Sam's assumption that fully grown adults were being used as test subjects for an enhancement drug, kind of like a real-life Captain America, was so far off base that he was reeling. Then he thought of something crucial. "Wait a minute," he mused, "You said every X series has a barcode like yours." Sam was just trying to adjust, to soak it all in and process.

Max gave him a curious look but nodded. Her hand reached back to self-consciously touch the base of her neck.

"Dean doesn't have that," he announced. He woke up the laptop and started typing, pulling up a series of stills. He picked one that showed a clear angle of Dean's back and bare neck to enlarge. "He can't be X series."

Max squinted at the screen. "Hold on," she said, "Go back." When he started flipping through the pictures she grabbed the computer and a scrolled through the file names instead. She pointed at two different pictures, "That's Ben and that's… someone else. Huh, guess he had a twin."

Sam looked at the two carbon copies of Dean. "So, Manticore is making clones," he remarked. "Superhero clones," he added with a grin.

Max smiled, his easy acceptance allowing her to relax a little. "Yeah."

"So, could Dean just be the source," he asked.

Logan wheeled back in from the other room and interrupted, "No, the donors were either deceased or the DNA samples were taken and then all contact was ended. Manticore didn't keep track of any of them. Look at the file names on the remaining videos. They all start with X1-042."

"So?"

Max snorted, flopping back into the couch.

Logan raised an eyebrow. "So… I haven't seen the records for donors, but I do know that there was an X1 line," he said.

Sam had already drawn his own conclusions. He'd come to accept that his big brother was made up of a patchwork of stitched together genes, a test tube prototype. "I didn't want to believe it at first," he admitted, looking down at the notes he'd made. He didn't catch the flash of disgust on Max's face. "Dean is all about family and he keeps saying family doesn't end in blood, but not being a Winchester would crush him. If he had no Winchester blood at all and John lied to him all these years…"

"And you," Max pressed, voice hard.

Sam looked up, recoiling in surprise. "He's my brother. I couldn't care less what his genes say," he replied harshly. "He's the best man I know." He was offended that she would even question his commitment, after everything he'd gone through to be standing with them. That is, he was offended until he saw the little grin on Logan's face. Oh. That had been a test. Oops. It had been a long day.

"I think Logan is right. Your brother is the only surviving X1 series prototype," Max told him.

"But, he doesn't have a barcode anywhere. I would know. I've had to stitch up wounds on nearly every inch of his body," he argued.

"I don't have an answer for that," she admitted.

He nodded. "X1 or not, he's my brother. I'll do whatever he needs, except leave him there. That is not an option," he replied.

This time, Max really smiled. "Just what I wanted to hear."

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

November 2nd, 1991

Dad had stumbled in last night, cursing and leaking blood all over the small motel room. Dean had ignored the acerbic jabs and subtle insults spilling out of the man's mouth as he practically carried him to the bathroom. Dad had been in a foul mood for a couple days before he'd taken off on this hunt, half-cocked and having done barely any research. This time of year was hard on all three of them. Dean knew, even though he was just a boy, that the man had left to blow off some steam. He had once explained, while nursing the massive hangover that always followed the anniversary of Mom's death, that hadn't wanted to vent with the boys so near or, worse yet, end up hurting one of them without meaning to.

Dean had ducked under Dad's flailing arm, ignored the stinging in his eyes when Dad's fist connected with his face. He'd poured half a bottle down the man's throat while he stitched up the worst of it and then held the little bathroom trashcan as Dad spewed it all back out, the scent of whiskey thick and cloying in the small room. Dean was just grateful that Sammy hadn't woken up. The squirt's nose would have scrunched up and then the wheels in that big brain of his would have started turning. Next, would have come the questions. Dean had no answers to give, nothing that wouldn't have upset his baby brother even more. But, thankfully, he hadn't stirred, hadn't had to watch Dean clean up the mess or watch him blink back the tears,as he told himself that things would be better in a few days. Dad always got bad this time of year.

The next morning he hustled Sammy out to play with some friends from his school. They'd been in town long enough for the mini-socialite to get comfortable and Dean had checked them out; parents, dog, and all. As far as he was aware, there were no monsters lurking at the Kallum household, just one massive hairy dog and its perpetual puddle of drool. Ick. It'd be preferable to making the kid stay in the motel room, though. Dean didn't mind handling Dad's bad days. He just didn't want Sammy to have to. He wouldn't understand. Sammy had no memories of their mother, her gentle smile and golden hair. He didn't remember the way she sometimes, if the light caught her just right, glowed like an angel. Dean missed her so, so much. Dad did too. It's why he tried so hard to get beat to Hell on the first of every November, and why he drank himself into oblivion if that failed to keep him under through the next morning. By now, it was like clockwork.

There was a deep groan coming from the other bed. Dean sat on the scratchy motel comforter with his eyes squeezed shut and willed the man to stay down. There was the dry hiss of sheets pooling, the creak of the cheap mattress as a heavy weight shifted, and a deep groan from a very hungover and still injured man. Dad was up. Dean waited. He was lanky and awkward right now, a string bean of a boy and still growing.

"Fuck," Dad growled, holding his head in his hands with a pained look on his face. He hadn't noticed his oldest son yet, but he reached for the aspirin and water by the bed without bothering to open his eyes. It was there because it was always there.

Dad stumbled when he stood, pointing his body in the general direction of the bathroom. Dean caught him, sliding the man's muscled arm over his thin shoulders so he could prop him up on the way to take a piss. Dad didn't acknowledge him until he was coming back out, smelling a bit less rank but looking no better. He had an open bottle of whiskey in his hand, must have stashed it before the hunt. He wasn't planning on staying conscious this year either.

"Dad," he tried to get the man's attention.

Dad grunted, taking another mouthful of fire into his gullet.

Dean stepped into his view cautiously, holding a small paper bag in his outstretched hand. "I got you a bagel," he said, "You need to eat."

He barely kept hold of the food when the man batted his hand away, going a little green at the gills when the stench of vomit appeared again. Whiskey and bile soaked into the carpet between Dad's feet and he didn't seem to notice that it had splashed on his own skin. He just swished his mouth out with some more hunter's helper, swallowing it down. He was going slower, though, and he even set the bottle down in favor of snatching the food from Dean's limp grasp. "Thanks," he grunted and turned to watch the wallpaper.

Dean knew this was all his fault. If he'd been quicker, stronger, smarter then maybe Mom wouldn't have burned. If he didn't look so much like her then maybe Dad could forget about the gaping raw hole in his heart that wouldn't let them rest. His own father couldn't even look at him most of the time and Sammy would never know a real home or have friends for longer than a few short weeks. and it seemed they both would always be behind the curve, adjusting to the quirks of a new teacher at a new school as often as some kids grew out of their shoes.

Dean nodded, but he didn't say anything. He knew whatever happened that his Dad would be sorry after the alcohol cleared his system. Dad wasn't himself. How could he be? Dean just had to ensure that Sammy would never know. Dean could heal the physical marks left on him. There wouldn't be anything permanent yet. He was good at that, but Sammy shouldn't have to know that either.

The sun had passed its zenith when Dean set about to get something besides whiskey into Dad's stomach. The bagel had done its job, but it was long gone by now. The only problem was that the man had been steadily drinking since morning, a solid five hours, and his temperament was only getting surlier. His Dad hadn't smacked Dean around as mush as usual, though, and it made him bold. It made him think that perhaps he was starting to get through to the older man. His ribs would heal in a day or two, but he and Sammy wouldn't last long without him, no matter what Dean wanted to tell himself about his own abilities. Dad couldn't keep doing this. He pushed a warm mini-mart burrito beneath his Dad's limp hand, hoping the man would take a bite of that instead. Dean had been afraid of the possibility of alcohol poisoning since he'd learn about it in health class, but that didn't make the chances of avoiding the deadly condition any more likely.

Dad frowned and looked down at the meager meal. "What m'I s'posed ta-do wi'that," he slurred, though his aim when he snagged hold of the collar of Dean's shirt to reel him in was on point.

"I th-thought," Dean began with a slight stutter in his speech. Just because he could heal faster than anyone he knew didn't mean that the wounds didn't hurt when they happened. Dad could do some serious damage when he got like this, drunk and so grief-stricken he was bitter and enraged. His eyes strayed to the small picture of Mary by the man's elbow. It was one of the few that had survived the fire. Dean didn't even have a picture of her. He had to trust his memory those few times Sammy had begged him to describe her, but when he closed his eyes and thought of his Mom he smelled her vanilla shampoo and warm apple pies. The rest had gotten a bit hazy over the years.

Dad chucked the burrito across the room. "No, you didn't think," he yelled.

Dean's voice stopped working. He was a defective little coward, so weak that one outburst from his Dad had him mute and looking for the exits. He wanted to explain, to tell his Dad that he loved her too. He just never could seem to get those words passed the lump in his throat when he tried. He could only shake his head in denial, eyes wide and pleading for understanding.

When Dad stood to his full height, he towered over Dean. He knew there was a point in the man's drunkenness when he seemed to almost be sober again, but it was a ruse. His steps might not sway and his aim might magically return to him, but Dad wasn't home anymore. "Why didn't you burn instead of her, Dean? Would have been better off. Useless little freak. Can't even trust you to keep my son in the damn room when I tell you to. She was good. She was pure. Not some fucked up monster like you," he sneered.

Dean backed up and repeated to himself, 'That's not my Dad'. If he said it enough, would it come true? Would he draw a silver blade and find the beast bearing down on him cringe away from the burn? He'd tried it once, and it had taken him a week to recover from the beating. He mouthed, 'No', over and over again, but he couldn't lay a hand on his Dad. He remembered too well the Dad he had once been and craved to be wrapped safely in those loving arms once again. One day that would happen, his Dad might come back to him. Dean just had to hold out a little longer, endure a little more so Sammy didn't have to. As long as Sammy didn't have to.

He made a break for the door, his body a blur as he moved as fast as he could, faster than humanly possible. The punch caught him in the temple and he went down hard, bouncing off the wall with a sickening crack. There was a Dean-sized dent in the drywall and spot of blood where his head had struck a stud inside the wall. He was a hazy for a moment, the room spinning, and the sounds around him had this odd echo quality. Concussion, his memory supplied.

"Stay down or I'll put you down," Dad warned. He looked huge looming over Dean as he lay crumpled on the floor.

Dean groaned, sitting up and holding his head. He tried to stop the bleeding, but the red stuff just kept leaking out through his fingers. "I need a towel and some gauze," he croaked, looking up at Dad's face.

Dad didn't say anything, but his fingers uncurled and it looked like he was thinking about going back to the table for some more whiskey. His eyes kept darting between Dean and the bottle.

Dean waited until his decision was made, his body turning towards the whiskey, before he tried to stand. It seemed, though, that Dad intended to enforce his earlier order. His fist came flying, his body pivoting its weight behind the punch. Dean knew this one would take him out and then nothing would protect his baby brother while he was down. So, he did the one thing he had promised himself he would never do. Dean blocked the hit and threw a punch of his own, taking the much larger man out of the equation. Between that and the alcohol he'd be down until tomorrow.

There was a soft sound by the door. Dean almost missed it over the thud of Dad's unconscious body collapsing to the floor, boneless "Sammy," he breathed as he saw in the trembling little boy, his backpack a couple sizes too big on his back. He was pale and crying.

Sammy flattened against the door when he rushed forward, reaching out to hold him, "No!" His gaze was glassy, like he wasn't really seeing Dean at all.

Dean moved slowly, stopping in front of his brother without touching him or boxing him in. "Sammy?"

It took a long moment, but when Sammy's eyes cleared he went from silently crying to straight out bawling, the wracking sobs shaking his small body. He launched himself into his big brother's arms and cried, "Dean!"

Dean shushed him, using the nonsense sounds and gentle rocking he'd learning from Mom. "When did you get back, little buddy," he asked when Sammy quieted.

Dean was crying too when he learned that Sammy had seen enough to damn their Dad. The kid had watched the man bounce his big brother's head off the wall.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

042 tugged on the bonds keeping him immobile. He squeezed his eyes shut against the bright lights shining down on him. He bit down on the leather between his teeth, gnashing as if to cut right through it. If he had been a little stronger, he might have managed it. He told himself that as his blunt human teeth met the metal strands woven between the layers of the bit, even though he knew it was a lie. His strength was nothing compared to a fully grown X4 much less the 5's, 6's, and 7's that the rig had been reinforced to hold.

"Shhh. Easy there," a woman's voice softly drifted over him. He felt the gloved hands on his arm seconds before a tide of ice was pushed into his veins. "There there," she soothed, "Just relax." He felt her fingers petting over the thin skin of his ankle, moving the scratchy fabric of the pants someone had put on him. Her touch was hypnotic and once again he was drifting off, drifting away on a tide of drugs and exhaustion.

042 was floating in a sea of blue. Blue blue blue. Rolling mists of the color as far as he could see.

"Dean," she called out.

Blue.

"Dean."

He turned over, cheek pressed into the fluffy cloud supporting him. He felt languid, utterly at peace without a care in the world. He hadn't felt this good since that one time he'd broken his femur in two places and Dad had strung up a couple bags of morphine to keep him calm and off his feet the first week it had been healing. It kind of felt like that, his thoughts slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.

"042," she screeched.

That got a reaction, he sat up abruptly and the cloud dissipated from beneath him, sending him into a free fall. He screamed, terror gripping his endocrine system and flooding his body with epinephrine. Cue the medical alarms.

"042. Dean," her whisper gently washed through him, "Control yourself."

He heard her speaking in the background, a disembodied feminine voice. At any other time, he would have joked that she'd make good money on a sex phone line. He got a slap for that, the sting just as real on his cheek as if it had actually happened. He laughed. He'd been falling for what felt like forever and he had yet to hit the ground. He was dreaming. It was the only explanation. He was locked inside his own head, probably swimming in one of those big sensory deprivation tanks the top brass seemed to love so much. The things could seriously screw with a person's head. Combine that with a psyops psychic and it was a formidable brainwashing tool. He stopped falling.

He heard clapping. "I knew you could do it," she praised.

He looked around the blue, blue room, feet hovering above the floor, and asked, "Who are you?"

"We don't have time for twenty questions. Listen," she urged. "When you wake up, remember."

A flood of images assaulted him, things he hadn't even known he'd forgotten and a mission that he had lost track of.

"Remember," she repeated.

He saw the compound, like a three-dimensional schematic with a glowing path leading him out. He knew the time. He knew the method.

"You will only have one more chance, Dean. You are slated for retirement if my conditioning fails. So, remember and escape," she told him, pleaded with him.

"What about you," he asked, concern for this faceless woman evident.

He heard her impatience bleeding through in her tone, "Remember and escape. That is all you must do."

The real world tugged at him and he didn't want to go.

"Remember," she whispered as he opened his eyes and yanked the mouthpiece away from his mouth.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Sam drew the gun from beneath his pillow and vaulted out of bed before he even figured out he was awake. He'd gone soft, so used to sleeping in a fortress. With a shout, he landed on the floor with his limbs tangled up in the sheets and wondering what the hell had happened while he blearily pointed the barrel in the general direction of the door.

There was a woman laughing in the other room. No, she was giggling, gleeful. Sam blinked. He knew that sound.

It took a little concentration to unwind his legs from the sheets holding him hostage, and when he lurched to his feet his balance was a little off-kilter. He wasn't accustomed to getting large amounts of sleep. He was the poster child for insomnia. He still needed his four hours, though, and he hadn't gotten it. Sleep deprivation was creeping on Sam, trying to hook its insidious claws into his brain. He really needed to figure out how to sleep with other people in the house. This was getting stupid.

There was a redhead sitting on the couch, her hand cupping a steaming mug of something smelling of fruit. She lifted her face as he shuffled in and exploded off the couch with a delighted cry of, "Sasquatch!"

He caught her full body tackle with an 'oof', rocked back on his heels but held steady. She might be tiny, but she'd always been a fireball. "Charlie?" He scratched a bit of crust from one eye, keeping her upright with his other arm since she didn't look like she was going to let him go right that moment. "How'd you get here," he asked.

She grinned up at him. "Well-p, I vouched for you," she explained.

And, Sam's brain lit up. Duh. They knew her, probably had met her in person. Most likely, she'd spent time here in Logan's apartment like he was, far from home and in too much danger to check into an affordable hostel. "Oh," he mumbled, not yet able to articulate further.

She began to excitedly tell him all about discover's one of their father's old storage lockers in Utah. Apparently, his dad cleared a few dangerous ghosts from the owner's home. Dad had rented a locker under some bogus name using a phone number that'd been dumped a decade ago, but when the monthly rent money dried up the guy hadn't the heart to toss everything out onto the street. The guy's kid inherited the place last week… Charlie gushed about how it was pure chance that she'd bothered to search some of the former hunter's old aliases and got a hit.

"Charlie, Charlie. Slow down, please," he begged as he held her at arm's length. "Brass tax. I just woke up."

Logan grinned, matching sparks of enthusiasm. "She found the research your father did on Manticore almost thirty years ago," he told Sam and pointed to a pile of boxes by the front door.

"Wanna bet what's in 'em," Charlie piped up, bouncing on her feet.

Sam blinked and willed his brain to full alertness, wincing at the effort it took. "Yes, I really would," he replied honestly. Then he announced, "Coffee first," and stalked off into the kitchen to make it happen. He didn't bother doctoring it up. He drank the bitter brew straight, shuddering as the heat seeped into him with the promise of caffeine nipping on its heels. The taste helped too. Then he was pawing through the boxes—newspaper clippings, folders of loose notations, and a series of composition notebooks landing in a halfway sorted pile on the floor in front of him.

Charlie rubbed her hands together. She grabbed two of the notebooks, handed one to Logan and cracked the other open herself.

Logan squinted, "Your father wasn't big on legibility, was he?"

Sam laughed, "No, he wasn't."

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)


	6. Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Stay with me, Dean," she urged. "Sammy is coming for you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes are from Supernatural, S05E15 My Bloody Valentine and S9E12 Sharp Teeth.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

November 4th, 1991

John couldn't remember what had happened a few days ago. He never did after one of his benders and apparently, the one of a few days ago had been a doozy. November 2nd, the of Mary's death. Every year on that day she died all over again, skin peeling black and drifting down from the ceiling onto his horrified face as she burned. There weren't many days he didn't think about her in one way or another, but the anniversary of her death seemed to bring back that night in full technicolor hallucinations. There were even a couple times where he thought he saw his youngest eyes burn a sickly yellow, same color as that of the demon that had put a claim on the boy. He'd been frantically trying to figure out what the hell was going on since he'd heard about that one. It was a damned powerful son of a bitch and it wanted Sam. John could imagine, had imagined, what that demon would do to his youngest if the son-of-a-bitch managed to get its slimy hands on him. Drowning his fear with alcohol was a poor coping mechanism at best, though. He was hiding in the inebriation. He knew that and regretted it. That didn't stop him from reaching for the bottle on most nights, though. Like now, he was already on his second six pack and the sun was still up. He'd been steadily nursing the brew since breakfast. Hell, he'd poured the stuff in his oatmeal, one of the best hangover cures he knew of.

Dean scuttled around his outstretched legs as the kid headed for the door. The livid bruising on his face was still a mystery. Dean claimed he'd gotten clipped when John had fallen and accidentally bashed his head against the wall. It explained the hole in the drywall well enough and he'd believed Dean's story. Until today, it was hard not to notice the way the kid treated him like a stick of lit dynamite and the way little Sam wouldn't come any closer to him than across the room. He knew by the skittish way both of his boys had been acting, he just may have been a right bastard two nights ago and he was just now realizing it. Good job, John.

Dean got his hand on the door handle, Sam plastered to his back, and John has no idea where the two of them are headed. "Dean," he says a little too sharply and a little too loudly.

Dean started and Sam whimpered, sliding around the older boy's body until he was mostly hidden. "Sir," is all Dean managed to get out, but his voice was strong. John couldn't help but be proud. The kid always could keep his cool.

John glanced at the clock in his periphery. "Get me a bowl of chili while you're out," he said and tossed the kid a twenty hoping it would be enough to cover all three of them. As the two of them disappear out the door John wiped his hand down his face and wished he could erase the last forty-eight hours.

John heard the humvees pull up outside, and cursed himself. He should have heard them coming. It's a distinctive sound, old style military hardware. He'd know the deep growl of those engines anywhere, and their off-road tires were making a helluva racket on the pockmarked asphalt. He was out the door and going after his boys without a second thought, a knife in his boot and a pistol stuffed into the back of his jeans just in case. He caught the boys at the corner of the motel and Sam flinched hard when he grabbed hold of the kid to hide all three of them along the side of the building. "Shhh," John urged when Sam whined and wiggled to be let go.

Dean, though, switched easily into hunting mode, as John had come to call that deadly calm that settled over the boy just before a fight. The uneasiness melted away and all traces of emotion smoothed out of his face. "What is it, sir," he asked, and John didn't miss when the kid slipped his hand behind him.

John wondered when his oldest had started carrying. "I'm not sure," he replied, but his mind was back on that day when Dr. Sandeman had stood on his doorstep with a baby in his arms, Dean. He didn't know much, the geneticist had been disturbingly vague about where the boy had come from, but he'd dropped enough hints since then. Sandeman had called John the day after Mary's death, while the ashes were still warm, and he had been asking some weird questions. He'd been asking if John had seen people that looked military, and before John could answer he'd asked if they knew about Dean. Those were military humvees and military personnel were climbing out of the cab. Their civilian garb did nothing to hide the fact that their every action screamed otherwise. He wondered if the two were somehow related.

"Dean," Sam said, shrill with fear.

John peered around the corner of the building and watched two men kick down the door to their room. "Shut him up," he hissed. He started backing them up along the wall, his thoughts sluggish with the hangover pulsing behind his eyes.

He looked back long enough to see Dean's hand clamped over his brother's mouth. He's talking softly to the kid, "Easy, Sammy. It's going to be ok. You just have to trust us for a little while. Can you do that? Good boy." Sammy's nodding along, tears sliding down his cheeks. Guess that was better than the wailing that would have revealed their position. Dean caught him watching, or maybe he knew all along. The kid was eerily perceptive and there were times John would swear Dean could see in the dark. The look he gave his father was asking, 'We good?'

John jerked his chin hard to the rear of the building, urging the boy to get his brother moving while he provided cover.

But Dean didn't round the corner. The boy took a look and then backed up, grabbing hold of his brother to keep the kid close. "Dad," he said uncertainly. His 9mm was out and pointed, Sammy sandwiched between them.

They were trapped, barely armed and definitely unprepared. Weapons were leveled at them from both corners of the building. One of them said, "Put the guns down," like John and his boy would listen. They didn't.

They met at the center, Sammy covered on both sides and flat against the side of the building. "Dean," the little boy whined and grabbed at his older brother's belt. "What do they want?"

"I don't know," Dean replied.

The answer came from one of the soldiers, "Give us the boy and you can walk away."

Sam wrapped both arms around Dean's waist, trembling.

"Not happening," John snarled, reaching behind him with one hand to make sure his youngest hadn't strayed.

"You don't have a choice. We are authorized to use all necessary force."

John considered his options. They had him cornered, backs against the wall and escape didn't seem likely. "Tell me he won't be harmed," he demanded.

Dean stiffened against his back. "Sir," he hissed out, uncertain.

Sammy wiggled away from him.

"He will be delivered in good condition," the man promised. Two men stepped out on either side of the small family and another pair completed the semi-circle, boxing them in. "Make the right decision, Winchester. There're two snipers trained on you. Would be a shame for the little one to die so young," he threatened.

Dean reacted quicker. He plastered Sammy between him and wall, covering as much of his little brother as he could with his boy body. The pistol wavered in his hand while he got Sam situated and persuaded the kid to stay put, even though his glare didn't. "Back off," he growled and it sounded almost cute coming from the pre-teen despite the steel in his voice.

"Dean," John said softly, "Go with them."

"Sir," his oldest queried, not believing what he was hearing.

"For Sammy," he added. John couldn't believe what was coming out of his own mouth. They wanted his boy alive, though. He had to hold onto that.

The boy, for one brief crack in his tough exterior, looked devastated and betrayed. Then he disarmed, setting the gun down on the hard-packed ground and followed by the knife he'd gotten for his birthday. Dean pushed his younger brother towards John with a, "You'll be fine, Sammy." He took one step forward and they were on him, wrestling him to the ground.

John shielded his youngest. Sam was fighting him in earnest, doing his best to inflict damage on John for giving up, yelling accusations and threats if anyone so much as touched a hair on Dean's head. All John could do was hold onto his distraught little boy. The last thing John wanted was for the kid to watch his big brother get pinned to the dirt and hauled off like a prized hog. He didn't want to see it either. Dean was chained up, stuck with a syringe full of some clear liquid, and shoved into the backseat of one of the humvees without a chance for any of them to say goodbye.

Sam wouldn't acknowledge him when they got back to the room, door hanging half off its hinges. He was never going to forgive John for this, not if John couldn't get Dean back, and he would get Dean back. The room was too quiet, too spacious without a third person to fill it in. There was a gaping hole in John's chest. He had been telling himself over the last two years that Sammy just wasn't ready to be on his own yet, that he still needed Dean to keep him safe while John was out on hunts. Technically, that was true. It was just, John wasn't ready either. He'd gotten attached to the boy, started thinking of him as a son. Dean was Mary's son, blood or not. Dean had become his son too, monster or not, and he discovered too late that he cared.

Sam sulked on one of the motel beds, flicking through the TV channels with a glazed look in his eyes. He'd shut down, mad as hell and taking it out on the man that truly deserved it. Not even a direct order got the boy's attention. John didn't bother correcting the obviously disrespectful attitude. As long as Sam stayed put, he didn't care how he acted or what he thought of his father. John had more important things to take care of. In the very back of his journal, tucked into a small slice of the leather cover was a number that had been given to him over twelve years ago by the same man that had brought him Dean. He dialed it now, pressing the phone to his ear like he could will the other end to connect.

Arthur sounded tired. They hadn't talked in a long time, but the good doctor recognized him immediately. John hoped he heard the desperation in his voice as he explained what had happened. By the time he was setting the phone back on the table, his eyes seeking out his youngest like a lifeline, he had the man's promise. He knew who had Dean and his son would be brought back to him soon. Even giving Sam the good news didn't seem to cool his little boy's fury at his father's second betrayal in three days. John wasn't so sure he didn't deserve it. He'd sacrificed one child to save another. What had he done?

Dean was brought back to them three days later. There was a pounding on the door. He opened it to find his oldest unconscious, crumpled on the ground like he'd been tossed there. Sam hadn't spoken to him since the incident. He spoke only when someone else was asking the questions, when anyone but John engaged his attention. Eight years old and his youngest had already learned how to dig in the screws. Sam wasn't being quiet now, though. He was yelling, "Dean!," as soon as he got a glimpse outside. He didn't leave Dean's side until his older brother woke, his smile as bright as the sun when it happened.

John performed the usual tests as soon as the drugs wore off and then he added a few more. Dean didn't remember much, not enough to figure out where he'd been taken or who exactly had taken him. It was clear that wherever he'd been, Dean had endured great trauma. The boy suffered nightmares for weeks afterward. Dean's fierce protectiveness of little Sammy seemed to triple in magnitude. He'd always had an eye on the kid before, but now Dean was never not in between Sam and possible danger. He had yet to smile, even when Sam looked up at him like he was his whole world or when the kid sought out Dean instead of John when he got scared. He'd become the perfect miniature bodyguard, snapping to on command and paranoid as all hell. There had been a time not so long ago that John had done everything he could think of to push Dean into assuming that role. Now that someone else had succeeded he was having second thoughts. The boy had become his soldier. John just wanted his oldest son back.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2014

_But something’s broken here, Dean._

_We don’t see things the same way anymore. I can’t trust you. Not the way I thought I could, not the way I should be able to._

_Everything that has ever gone wrong between us has been because we’re family._

_I’m saying, you want to work? Let’s work. If you want to be brothers…_

"You son of a bitch," Dean snarled into the receiver, knuckles white on the wheel.

Colonel Lydecker wasn't fazed. "042, we have no use for Sam Winchester, but I intend to use all means at my disposal to bring you home," he told him.

He'd heard that before. It was the company mantra, all necessary means. Even worse, he knew Manticore meant it.

"Had you come peacefully when you were asked none of this would have been necessary," the Colonel reasoned.

A muscle in Dean's jaw ticked and he made the same decision he always made. "Call off your dogs. I'm coming in," he said and hung up. "Son of a bitch," he yelled and yanked hard on the wheel, spinning the car into the opposite direction.

Sam's words had been bouncing around in his skull. The kid had looked so frail he'd been using the chair for support, but his voice had held conviction. He'd meant it. Dean knew he deserved them and he knew it had been a long time coming. He just hadn't believed Sammy would ever say it out loud. He'd hoped they would pretend forever. The two of them against the world. What a crock of shit. He'd been fooling himself this whole time. John had never meant for them to get close, for them to be real brothers, but it had happened and the guy had just gone along with it. The whole thing was bound to fall apart eventually. Maybe this way Sam wouldn't get hurt in the process. His baby brother had enough to deal with just healing up from those trials.

The sedan's engine hiccuped, setting Dean's teeth on edge. This rust bucket was coasting its last legs. He still couldn't understand why he'd chosen to leave Baby back at the bunker, abandoned with the other classics in that massive garage. It had been a split second decision and he'd regretted it almost instantly. He missed her. The Impala would likely never be driven again, but he couldn't bring himself to sit behind her wheel right now, maybe not ever again. Not on this drive. The thought of Manticore's greasy little hands getting all over her was enough to make him shudder in revulsion. No, he'd walk in with nothing to hold him down. He refused to give those bastards anything else to leverage against him. Sam might not want to be family anymore, but that didn't mean Dean could just let his shit ruin what was left of Sam's life. He had to own up, one last time, and maybe he could find a few things about himself while he was there.

The little crap car he'd squeezed himself into had puttered along for the last thousand miles or so until the car's engine wheezed and then stuttered to a stop, leaving him stranded. It gave a dying cough when he tried to restart the engine, before falling silent. There was a mountain of snow on either side of the road where he'd pulled over. He got out and could almost feel his own breath freezing onto the tip of his nose. Whoever said February was a spring month had been lying. It looked to be the alternator when he got a look under the hood. Easy enough to fix, but not on the side of the road with no parts and no tools. It seemed the whole world was out to shit on Dean. He'd have to walk the last few miles. Fitting that he'd be using his own two feet to get him to Manticore. Thankfully, he'd developed no fond attachment to the hunk of nineties metal he'd misappropriated. He had no history with the thing, so leaving it behind didn't dig any deeper at the bloody canyon carved deep inside of him. There wasn't even a duffel for him to shoulder. He'd brought himself and a picture of Sam and him leaning against Baby's hood, years before Stanford was even a gleam in Sam's eye. He couldn't part with it.

His fingers sought out its shape in his back pocket as he walked, seeking comfort. What he was about to do frightened him. Manticore had been dogging his heels for most of his life. For a while, they'd seemed content to take him in every year or so for evaluation. He'd been a test case, or so he was told. Recently this new guy had gotten his number. Dean hadn't been in for a check-up since before the Pulse, when Lucifer burned out every active piece of electronics on the continent. This Colonel Lydecker, though, had been insistent. At first, Dean had blown him off, confident in his own skills to evade the teams he sent. The bottom had dropped out of his stomach when the first warrant had shown up on Jody's desk bearing Sam's name. It hadn't been much longer until Dean was waving the white flag. Which brought him here.

His breath puffed out in clouds of white crystals in front of his face. He knew they were watching him. They'd make him walk all the way to the gates, but that didn't mean they wouldn't be prepared for the unlikely prospect that he'd bolt. He refused to be carried in, hogtied and defeated, or worse tranqed. If he was indeed going to his execution like he feared he'd be marching there by his own two feet, head held high. Damn the snipers with the bead on his back. He wouldn't let them see him sweat. Dean looked around at the shimmering white. Well, sweat wouldn't be the best word to use, but the sentiment was the same. He gave them a wide grin and a middle finger, maybe a pair of them as he kept walking.

There was an entire squad of kids waiting for him, baby fresh teen faces making his gut churn. These kids should be worrying about prom and college, not automatic weapons and active combat. Not without the choice. The big gates opened for him, swinging soundlessly away from him. This was it. Dean took a deep breath, settling his nerves like he was headed into a fight, and walked into the compound. Twenty some rifles pointed in his direction.

The Colonel looked on as he got to his knees in the slush, hands behind his head, and surrendered.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Sam tossed his pencil onto the open journal, leaning back in disgust. "He knew. John told him when I was eight. What kind of a father," he stopped talking. He needed a break. They'd been at it for hours, through two pots of the arabica beans that were frankly worth their weight in gold as far as Sam's taste buds were concerned. In fact, he was headed for another cup. He stood and stretched, his back popping in protest.

He was coming back, three full cups of steaming black caffeine in his hands when Charlie's phone rang. The tinkling video game tune, Sam couldn't pinpoint which one, startled them all and Charlie cursed, "Oh, fudge." She fumbled to answer the call and then hurried into the other room, leaving the two men behind.

Sam waited for her to come back, both the coffee and the journals forgotten. He had personally read only a few of them and what he had seen was very disturbing. John had been clinical. On many occasions he referred to Dean as a monster and notes about his brother's training had sounded much like the man was training a dog and not his son. The list of punishments handed out far outweighed the rewards. There were even notations on how well the boy healed afterward. On others John showed remorse for his actions, referring to Dean as if he considered the boy his son. The dichotomy was jarring and Sam couldn't discern which entries were real and which were the guise, not without the man himself to talk to. No wonder his brother had obeyed any command without hesitation. He had no way to know which John he'd be dealing with that day. Sam wanted to resurrect the bastard just so he could get some answers and then kill him all over again.

Logan had started leafing through one of the folders. He cleared his throat. "This must be difficult to read," he said, looking sympathetic.

Sam shook his head in disgust. "I had no idea, about any of this. When we were kids John trusted Dean more. He didn't question what he did all the time, but me, if I so much as sneezed without permission I was running drills. I thought he loved Dean more and it made me so angry. It didn't even occur to me that he didn't love Dean at all," he replied.

"Maybe it wasn't so black and white," he suggested. "I mean, finding out his oldest might be a genetic riddle must have been quite a shock. And he was a widower on the run from a powerful demon after one kid and a pseudo-military project trying to claim the other. That, and figuring out how to raise two young boys on the road."

That didn't excuse anything. John had a lot to answer for. So did Sam. He was seeing his childhood in a whole new light and he wasn't comfortable with what he saw. Dean's life had been even more hellish than he'd known and Sam had only piled on the pain whenever things got a little tough or he didn't get exactly what he wanted. He'd been doing it all of their lives, acting like a spoiled little brat, and his brother hadn't complained once. "Yeah, well, he should have done better," he asserted. Both John and Sam should have.

Logan might have had a response to that, but Charlie came back into the room looking somber. Sam was stewing, his mind leafing through the discrepancies between what he remembered and what he was reading. "I know where he is," she said suddenly and the bottom dropped out from under Sam as he snapped his full attention to her. "So, Logan helped me put out some feelers a while back, got my number out there," she explained and held up the phone, "I just got a call from someone inside Manticore with direct access to Dean. She said she was looking right at him while she was talkin' to me. Can you believe it?"

"When are we leaving," he choked out, the shock knocking him off balance. This was happening too fast, a miracle out of left field. He couldn't bring himself to question if his brother was still alive, if Sam would be recovering a corpse or staging a rescue.

"He's alive and he's nearby," Charlie reassured him and Sam was dizzy with relief. His knees wouldn't have held him if he'd been standing. "I've got a guard schedule and a rough idea of what the building looks like on the inside," she continued.

Logan picked up his cell phone. "I'll get Max in here. Maybe she has a few friends that'll help and I've got a few more that I can call. Think you can wait till tomorrow morning?"

Sam was shaking his head. No, he wasn't going to wait until tomorrow. They'd be lucky to hold him off another hour.

Charlie looked over at him, eyes soft with concern. "Logan, ask her if it's possible that I just talked to a kid. Cause I think I did," she said. "And, we may not want to wait. They're gonna kill him as soon as the psych eval is over with. She told me that he's marked for destruction. Does that mean what I think it means?"

Sam's vision went red, famous Sammy temper making him want to be impulsive. There would be no waiting, no planning, no delay of any kind. For the first time in pretty much ever, he wanted to barge in, guns blazing, and mow down everything in between him and Dean… and he'd probably get killed in the process. "I," he began and then took a deep breath. This sucked. Another deep breath. "Make it tonight and I won't go running off without you."

Charlie cut off whatever Logan was about to say, "I'll make sure of it."

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Dean got all the way outside before he realized that he wasn't feeling the bite of the cold or the sharp points of the undergrowth on his bare soles. With a sinking feeling in his gut, he stopped running and closed his eyes. It had been so good to be out of the tank, to be running free, and he'd accomplished exactly nothing. He belted out a yell from the pit of his gut and the sound echoed back to him from every corner of the forest gathering close around him, closing in on him. Purgatory. It was those trees, that forest floor beneath his feet. The reminder sent his psyche into a tailspin, but with nothing around him to fight his savagery turned inward. He held out his hand and thought about a knife, long and sharp. He could feel its weight settle into his hand even though he couldn't see it, and when he drew this imaginary knife down his forearm the skin parted like butter. Blood was cascading in a red curtain from the artery he shredded, but he wasn't feeling weak.

"You bitch," he screamed into the forest. Its stillness was unnatural. The dirt wasn't dirty enough. The chill wasn't biting enough. The wind wasn't loud enough, wasn't whistling properly between the branches of the canopy over his head. He laughed, a wild sort of despair swamping him, and it sounded wrong. Everything was wrong.

There was a ping, like a drop of water or a sonar array. Something tugged on him, like someone was pulling individual hairs on his head, plucking some and just rearranging others.

Dean panicked. Logically, he knew he had nowhere to run, not really. That didn't stop him from trying, though. He'd always been a man of action. Life had only reinforced his natural inclinations, of fight over flight and his firm belief to never, ever let them know you're afraid. So, with nothing tangible to lash out at he started running again, feet flying over the rough terrain like he knew where each and every pebble or stick was laid. The trees were a blur on either side of him. He ran until he was out of breath, heart pounding, head thundering, and the moment he wasn't thinking about it he felt like he was floating. He growled, "Let me out of here or I swear when I'm done you'll be begging for Manticore to save you. C'mon!"

Dean's answer was the silence of nature. The subtle sounds of animal life began drifting around him, the sort of soundtrack that could drown out the silence enough to allow sleep. It almost worked. Mild weather and small mammals had not existed in Purgatory. The longer it went on the louder the ringing in his ears got until he could barely hear himself think over the din. Still, she did not show. It was maddening. Something shoved at him hard and pieces of himself slotted back into place like blocks tumbling from one alignment to another. He dropped to his knees, clutching his head and screaming.

_That's one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean. Can't fill it, can you?_

He lost track of time, tumbling into delirium and unable to even slow his descent or even remember what transpired. When he came back to himself he was bruised and battered, trying desperately to hold onto the wounds he'd inflicted upon his own body. They were melting away almost as fast as he could renew them. Three hundred and sixty degrees all around him, the meadow had been painted red with his blood. A laugh bubbled out of him. Dean was hysterical, fast approaching the sort of glee he'd found training with Alistair, bits of blood and guts caught in his teeth. Each and every time he looked away his body was restored, like nothing had ever happened. Nothing endured. Not even himself.

That was how she found him. "Dean," she said.

He jumped, head snapping up. "Come to gloat," he asked. He was concentrating on the pool of blood he was sitting hip deep within so that it wouldn't leave him as well.

"I couldn't let you out yet," she replied and she sounded genuinely sorry.

"Show yourself. Keep me entertained and I just might forgive you," Dean lashed out. "Who are you?" The greenery became a twisting mountain road and he wondered where she'd pulled this scene from. He shrugged and started walking. She plucked at him again, and it barely elicited a twinge. Maybe Dean was getting better. Though, if asked, he couldn't have told you when it happened or why.

She chuckled. "At least you're ready to admit who you are now," she remarked.

He stopped and looked down on the valley below, the forest and the rust-colored meadow he'd decimated. He was alone, as far as his eyes could see, but he could feel her futzing around inside his skull. He knew it was her now, that she had given him this reprieve. He knew the madness was creeping up on him. He knew that was her fault too.

"I'm busy removing the blocks. You need to hold out a while longer," she told him. "Hmmm. You might feel a teensy bit unstable while I do this." He felt a poke, like a finger in his brain.

He scratched his head and started thinking really hard about her, just her.

She tsked. "Stop wiggling. Someone is going to notice something and we'll both be retired."

"So, you are real," Dean asked. The colors dripping, bleeding, falling down from the sky. For a moment he thought he saw a pair of massive black wings fly overhead.

"Stay with me, Dean," she urged. "Sammy is coming for you."

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Sometime before he was in danger of losing his patience, Max had dropped through the window like salvation, dragging along a brother of her own and introduced him as Zack. "We do this my way, Moosey," she told him with a smirk, and Sam was seriously regretting having explained the origins of that nickname.

Sam rolled his eyes. Snark seemed to be her default setting and it reminded him too much of Dean for comfort. Must be the military training and a lifetime of combat talking.

"He's my brother too," she explained. "I want to save him."

"We will save him," Zack corrected from where he was leaning against the window sill, the one exit in the room he could be sure of.

"I'd just feel better if there were more than two of you," Sam admitted.

"Lighten up," Max replied playfully. "You've got two bitchin' fems to watch your back, boys. Nothing's gonna happen to you."

Sam frowned, not sure whether he should be offended. He'd helped take down much worse than a few rent-a-cops and a puny little clandestine Frankenstein operation.

Charlie chose that moment to walk into the room wielding her trusty tablet. "Gather round, kiddies. It's story time," she announced. She waited until they were all able to see the tablet screen before she started talking, her expansive arm gestures almost making that particular prop useless. At least to Sam, it was. He couldn't see detail on a screen that was constantly moving. "The building you are going to is about five miles from Mount Ranier. The valley has only one way in and one way out, a narrow gravel-paved road maintained by Manticore," she told them and paused long enough to bring up an aerial map. "We got lucky. He was moved out of the bigger Wyoming facility a few days ago. From what I can tell this facility is the private playground of a woman named Renfro. The building itself is a modern style saw mill, one big open warehouse. It looks like she basically slapped up a bunch of temporary interior walls to make the individual rooms. There is no perimeter fence, just a couple of guys with guns circling the outside of the building and a couple more posted inside on a very predictable schedule." She cycled through a series of blurred images from straight overhead, satellite photos. As Sam was busy trying to memorize the geography from the photos, he couldn't help noting how handy such a thing could be in the future. Every time he thought he'd seen it all, Charlie would come up with yet another way to impress him.

"I'll park here," Logan said and pointed to a spot on the little road that didn't appear to have a discernible landmark. "Sam, you can hang with me at the car and make sure neither of us ends up dead before Max and Zack get back with Dean. Charlie is staying right over there," he pointed at his desk. "She made a nifty little program for Max to plug into the server running the security system. It'll install a backdoor and create a new administrative account she can use remotely. It should take about two minutes and then…"

"I'll wreak havoc with those wimpy little rent-a-cops. This is going to be so much fun," Charlie cut in, rubbing her hands together eagerly.

Zack didn't look impressed. "And, what'll I be doing," he asked casually.

Charlie piped up, waving one hand vaguely in his direction, "Do whatever X5's…do," like that would explain it all.

Sam, though, was busy brooding over the fight to come. Those four were insane if they thought he was going to just sit in the back.

"Do we know if there are any X-5's," Max asked.

Logan looked up and answered, "No. Seems she doesn't trust 'em." He showed a bit of amusement with that comment, but he was grim when he added, "Dean is her only project at the moment. She leaves the building every night at five and the night shift takes over at seven, leaving only a half strength security force until the next morning."

"So, we leave in one hour," Max remarked and Zack seconded her statement with a grunt.

Sam didn't waste time sitting around doing nothing. Maybe he couldn't go in after Dean, but he had to do something. He had to be prepared. He concentrated on equipping himself, his face set in a stony mask as he mechanically slammed clip after clip home. There were weapons of various types stashed all over his body and he was still adding to his collection. He didn't stop until there were no pockets left to fill, until adding one more weapon would have made him start to clink every time he moved. He had to be at his best. As a plain non-enhanced human, wasn't that a big heaping dose of irony, Max already considered him a liability and that had been before Sam had admitted that his ticker wasn't one hundred percent. His role in the battle plan had been a tenuous thing for a while there. It had taken some fancy footwork to get her to consider giving him the sniper rifle so he could sit and pick people off from a distance. John had made sure both his boys were damn good shots. He had made that very clear. He was still banned from the building, a liability. He'd lacked the leverage to push the matter in his favor. It had been a long time since someone had called him abomination, the boy with the demon blood, but he would have gladly put it up on the jumbotron if that'd earn him some cred with Ms. Super Soldier over there. His heart wouldn't have been an issue then.

Max quirked an eyebrow at him, "You done, Arnold?"

"I'm coming with you," he coldly informed her.

She laughed. "Yeah, right. You gonna climb your giant ass onto the back of my bike, slugger," she asked flippantly. "You won't be able to keep up. All you'll need is this," Max told him and patted the scarred wooden stock of a Mosin-Nagant.

He gritted his teeth, biting back the retort that likely would have gotten him laid out while Zack raised one eyebrow at him.

Logan wheeled into the room, his mouth open like he was going to say something. The tension in the room brought him up short. "Uh, did something happen," he asked.

A muscle in Sam's jaw ticked. He ground his teeth again and rebuked, "I need to be there." His eyes followed her as she checked to make sure the clip was full on a little black handgun and then crossed the room to press it into Logan's hand. The other man looked at the weapon like it was prone to going off at any moment, but he reluctantly stuffed it into one of the pockets of his jacket. He didn't look happy to be carrying it, but he appeared to know enough about guns to be useful. Sam just hoped he didn't shoot anyone else in the process.

Logan looked between the three of them, baffled at the change that had occurred in the short time he'd been out of the room. He cleared his throat, eliciting not even a twitch from either prospective combatant, Sam or Max. Well, then. Logan fiddled with his glasses, checking the lenses for dirt and then using the hem of his shirt to clean the smudges fuzzing his vision. "Charlie and I just confirmed it. X1-042 was moved from the Wyoming facility to Renfro's lab just outside of Seattle two days ago and he's still there," he said. That got a reaction. Sam looked elated, excited even until Logan looked up and finished talking, "He's marked for disposal at the end of the week."

Sam's elation quickly turned to horror as the implications sunk in. He snatched his keys from the table and shouldered the sniper rifle. "I'm not waiting any longer," he said. "They're going to kill my brother. It isn't going to happen. I won't let it. Not this time," he insisted.

"Why don't you man that Mosin like we planned and when it's clear, we'll call you in,” Zack offered, speaking for the first time in a while. It seemed he was the strong, silent type.

Max gave Sam a strange look, but she recognized the tone in his voice. She'd heard it in her own words a time or two, when one of her unit found themselves in a jam. She wouldn't leave them behind either, no matter how long it took. Her face softened. "Alright," she capitulated. She tossed Sam two boxes of ammo with a grin. "Just don't tag me. I like this jacket," she said and smoothed the collar of said leather jacket down to emphasize her meaning. "Zack, well, try not to damage him too severely," she added playfully.

Sam chuckled, "See you there," and headed for the door.

Logan caught his wrist as he passed. "You'll ride with me," he told Sam. "We don't know what condition Dean will be in," he added when Sam looked like he was going to argue. He didn't want to say that Sam might need to keep his brother alive long enough to get him to a hospital or that someone might be needed to keep pressure on the wounds while Logan drove like a maniac. That should have been self-explanatory. He did have the good sense not to comment when the big man followed behind his wheelchair without further discussion, though.


	7. Part Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She walked a little closer. "The problem is that he's not in a good place right now. You are very prominent in his mind. Most of the memories I have restored involve you in some way. If you weren't there in the moment, you were there with him in his thoughts. I must admit I was eager to bring you here. I sent those guards after you. You are the one person that can get through to him if he wakes up feral," she explained, trying to make him understand the reason for her actions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Clark is a nod to Tom Clancy, my favorite author, and his all around badass wetworks guy with a heart of gold.
> 
> *da - yes  
> *klevyy – cool, bitchin'  
> *davay otorvemsja – let's break away, let's live it up, let's paint the town red

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Dean would say he woke up in the blue again, but he wasn't really in the blue room and he wasn't really awake. He was beginning to understand that this place was a sort of holding pattern. You think that's air you're breathing now? The place was nausea inducing. He had no reference points for time or space. "Hello," he called out, the sound of his own voice echoing back at him multiplied by a hundred separate tracks. He winced.

"Shhh," his companion urged and the din quieted. She sounded younger now, almost childlike. For some reason, he was grateful that the woman's croon was gone from her voice. He'd recognized something familiar, the hackney accent and dulcet tone she'd used before reminding him of someone he couldn't quite place. Whoever she had been, the very sound of her borrowed voice had made him uneasy.

"Why haven't I woken up yet," he asked. "Can I see you?" He squinted, but the endless space faded into black after only a dozen feet or so.

"Sure," she replied. She began as a vague outline barely a shade lighter than the black and steadily grew nearer, brighter. He didn't know how she was doing it, but he could hear the sound of her soft-souled shoes with every step. It was a detail of normalcy and it helped to calm him. Even in this odd corner of his own mind. "I have woken you three times. Do you remember?"

He shook his head, too shocked at how young she looked to respond properly. She was prepubescent.

"You are doing much better now. You were wild, feral. There is so much you didn't know you had forgotten that when I unleashed it all you lost control. It took time to reintegrate," she told him. She stepped up to where he was floating. She was looking at him critically, soft brown eyes inspecting a piece of himself that he couldn't see, a piece that had nothing to do with the simulated flesh forming a body for him.

"What do you see," he asked without thinking. He could feel her doing something, poking around inside of his head, but it didn't drive him mad like before, like in the forest. He remembered what he had done then, what he had become, and he was ashamed that he could be so out of control.

She gave him a small smile like she knew what he was thinking about. She probably did. "I am almost finished. Your Sam is coming," she repeated.

Dean had heard her say that before. He wiggled a little in his bonds and found them strong, though he no longer felt trapped. "How do you know that," he wondered.

"You know, Dean, you could let up on the twenty questions routine every once in awhile," she mused. "I had it all planned out. This little toad of a man was a tech on my floor. It wasn't too hard to convince him to betray Manticore. I planted a few false memories and he was running off to your brother to spill the beans," she explained. She looked him up and down. "You do know that the only thing holding you up there is yourself, right?" She hummed when he shrugged and continued, "Anyways, the moron died before he could tell Sam anything so I had to improvise. I made one little call. I was so sure I'd covered my tracks. I'm not in operations, though."

"They found out," he concluded. He didn't notice that his feet were now flat on the floor and the sensation of being restrained was fading.

She nodded. "Yes."

Dean wiped a hand down his face, worried now. He knew without her telling him that she had been forced to accelerate her plans. His sanity had been jeopardized because she had been in a rush, but he couldn't fault her. She was trying to give him back things he had thought were long lost, irretrievable. "How long do we have?" Before they kill us both?

"Minutes, hours. I don't know. But, it'll be soon," she replied sadly. "How do you feel?" She mentally prodded at him again, feeling around here and there like she was checking how his injuries were healing. Perhaps that is exactly what she was doing.

He pondered himself for a moment before answering, "Better. Stronger."

"Good," she said. A new set of blueprints filled the space around them. They were the same as before but there was much more detail. "Study that while I do some tweaking," she told him. "Not much left to do."

He looked over the sweeping blues lines, the sharp corners, and the tiny looping text while she did whatever the hell she was doing. He couldn't stop her and whatever she had done so far seemed to be helping. So, he grumbled more out of habit than actual complaint and let her do what she wanted. He just hoped that he would be lucid the next time she woke him up. They were running out of time.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Sam's limbs didn't fit in the Prius properly. It hadn't bothered him before. He'd been too keyed up on the possibility that Charlie had found the real Eyes Only. Now he was all scrunched up, knees folded in the too small space, and he needed something other than the fight ahead of them to concentrate on. That something turned out to be the ache in his joints and the cramps settling into his motionless limbs. Max had gone ahead on her shiny black bike and he was wishing he'd thought to steal one of his own. Standing was going to hurt something awful when he was finally out of this contraption. Besides, she looked badass.

"Max is good," Logan offered.

With every checkpoint leading away from the city his disposition only worsened until he was scowling out through the window with his arms crossed stiffly over his chest. Sam wiped the silent tear tracks from his cheeks, His voice was too wrecked to remark on Logan's comment. His emotions all over the place. Hope was warring with despair and a number of other things he hoped to have sorted out by the end of the short drive. Thankfully, Logan didn't seem to take offense when Sam pretty much ignored him for the entire drive.

Their destination was a single sprawling building nestled back in a small valley, only one way in or out. There was no fence and no towers, just a winding driveway through the thick blanket of trees. "This is as far as I go, Mr. Clark," Logan told him as he parked next to Max's ride. The man was so busy with the dials and levers in his car that he missed the confusion on Sam's face as he tried to puzzle out who he'd been referring to.

Max and Zack met him at the tree line and they were quiet the whole way in. Max had been all sarcasm a few hours before, but he could see the soldier in her now, her mouth set in a hard line and ready for business. He could take a guess at the razor edge they were walking, the line between who they had been raised to be and who they yearned to become. It was a dilemma he could sympathize with. Max would have been smart to turn him away rather than jeopardize what she had built. Yet there she was, marching into the belly of the beast, helping him rescue his brother instead.

At first, it seemed the rescue would be rather anticlimactic. His silent shadows peeled off and disappeared as he took his position. Dean was the crack shot of the family, and deadly at a distance, but Sam was nearly as effective. At Zack's signal, he started shooting and those of the security team that he didn't take down were handled by his new friends. Watching them fight was breathtaking, like glimpsing a pair pumas hunting in the wild. Grace and power and speed like he'd never seen before and probably wouldn't ever again, not without meeting another of their kind. He wondered if Dean could move like that, if his brother had been holding back all this time. Had he been afraid Sam would react badly if he ever found out? When the yard was finally at rest, when the two slipped inside the building, he let out all the air he'd been holding in his lungs. He was getting antsy just watching the stillness through the scope's lens, just him and the rifle. His hands began to tremor. He didn't have a single doubt about Max and Zack's capabilities, but he was itching to get down there all the same.

After a while, the radio crackled to life next to him. "Door's open," Zack said, breaking through the hiss on the channel and telling him they were beginning the search.

Sam hunkered back down, scanning the little patch of clearing between the building and the surrounding forest. He was so intent on covering his companions' planned exit route that he neglected to notice that his own was in jeopardy. A prickle of unease crawled up his spine before he heard the twig snap a few feet to his left, but he wasn't fast enough to do anything about it. He was prone, laid out on his belly with a big rifle snug to his shoulder and nowhere to go. He tensed, one hand sneaking down for the handle of a knife he'd stashed beneath his chest. He'd stashed a few weapons on his person, but the knife was the only one he could reach without being noticed.

"Hands on your head, big guy," the man snapped out before he could get to it. Then he cocked the hammer on his gun for emphasis when Sam tried to inch his hand beneath him just a bit further.

The man's radio crackled, "You got him?"

"Yeah, single shooter like you thought," he replied and then he told Sam, "Leave the rifle on the ground and stand up, nice and slow. I've got no reason to keep you breathing."

"You got me," Sam replied, "No need to get violent." He kept his fingers laced in his hair and stood. The handle of his knife was sticking out from the undergrowth that had been pressed flat by the weight of his body. He wanted to reach down and grab it, but he'd never be fast enough to survive the confrontation. The guy was too far away and his finger was already tapping the trigger. Sam would likely be shot dead before he could use the blade to accomplish anything worthwhile. He felt impotent staring down the barrel of that semi-auto knowing that all he could do was let himself be captured and for the first time in a long while he wanted his borrowed demonic powers back.

There was a moment where Sam considered drawing down on the other man once he'd gotten to his feet. The attempt would have assuaged his bruised pride if nothing else, but his chance was lost after a second man stepped into view. “I got him covered,” the guy called out, and like that, Sam was boxed in. He consoled himself with the knowledge that these two men were going to be taking him that much closer to Dean as they found everything he'd squirreled away. Everything except for the blade in his boot, the very one Dean had once given him as a birthday gift.

"Start walking," one of them instructed, gesturing with a free hand. When Sam obeyed he called it in over the radio, "We're coming in."

Sam was out of breath and cursing his weakness after only a few minutes. They had started out pushing him hard until they realized that Sam wasn't faking it. He would never regret closing the gates to Hell, but he didn't like what the trials had done to him, the damage they'd left on his body. Just that short march, less than the length of a football field, was tiring. He used to run for miles, for fun. He shouldn't have even broken a sweat, but now he was reduced to huffing his way down the hill while the other man added a few new bruises to his back in an effort to get him to move faster.

The interior of the building was very much like a warehouse with a bunch of temporary walls erected to partition the space into different rooms. He didn't get much of a look at the layout before he was shoved into a cell and the big metal door clanged shut behind him. The man was telling him something about behaving and bodily harm, but all he could manage was a nod as he worked to get oxygen into his lungs. Today was turning into one of his bad days. He was useless like this, dead weight. He hoped his assessment of Max was right. He hoped she wouldn't just leave him behind. He hadn't known her that long, but he felt they at least shared that sentiment in common. No one would be left behind. If anyone could, he felt she might be able to understand what drove him. They certainly shared a few things in common. Her own family was being held not far from here. She had to be planning a way to free them all even now. It was what he would do, what he had done. Sam decided that if he got out of this in one piece he'd find a way to help her, and them.

He halfway expected Max or Zack to burst through the door and save him as he bent a paper clip from his pocket and worked at the lock. What did happen was completely unexpected. The tumblers clicked into place and like magic the other door, the one across the room began to move. He stood up, surprised. For a moment he thought he had actually done it, that somehow unlocking the cell door had triggered an automatic circuit somewhere. It was a stupid thought and he knew it, but he couldn't banish the traitorous hope that there would be no one on the other side of that door as it slowly opened.

The foot that emerged did not belong to Zack and was definitely too small to be Max. Instead of the black boots he was hoping to see, the girl that stepped through into the room was wearing off-white keds. She put her finger to her lips as she slipped inside, pushing the door closed behind her softly. She was young, flat chested with baby fat still clinging to her face. "You are taller than I expected," she remarked.

"What?"

She crossed the space and pulled the cell door open. "Are you ready to get out of here? Come on," she urged.

Sam didn't move. He just crossed his arms and replied, "I don't even know why you're here, or who you are."

She pulled a face, something between rolling her eyes and a plea to hurry the hell up. "I can get you to your brother," she replied. "Is that good enough for you?" She held the door open wide in invitation.

"Why should I believe you," he asked.

She did something that reminded him of Max the first time he'd met her. It was a little movement, a tick really, and he wondered if it was a byproduct of the Manticore experience or if their shared DNA cocktails were to blame. "042 was nice to me once," she said, something approximating a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "He won't remember, though. He's my first assignment, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't scoop him out for the conditioning." She closed her eyes, looking worn out, and then said, "I'm breaking down, but I've done what I can to repair him.” She opened her eyes and stared straight into his, “I want you to get him out of here, to somewhere safe. Can you do that?"

Sam searched her face for signs of a lie, for a subtle shift in her expression that would reveal whether a trap awaited him. He didn't find it. "Take me to him," he replied as he left the cell and followed her.

The sounds of fighting carried over to them from somewhere else in the building, flowing through the gaps between the drop ceiling and the flimsy walls, as one set of lights flickered into darkness. The girl picked up her pace. "This way," she called out, beckoning Sam to the end of the hall gesturing to a pair of double doors and what he assumed was the last room on this side of the building. The hallway was a dead end.

"Is he in there," Sam asked hopefully.

She grinned over her shoulder, white teeth gleaming in the semi-darkness. "Yes," she said. "Your friends might have drawn away his guards, but we don't have a lot of time to get him out.” She paused. “He'd alive, but be prepared. He doesn't look good."

Sam started running. He'd burst into motion, heading for those doors at a dead run as soon as that first word had left her mouth. He shoved through the doors at a frantic pace and so starved for oxygen he was heaving like a bellows, seeing stars. It was a moment before he could talk, much less take another step, but the picture in front of him would have halted him in his tracks regardless. Sam's eyes were fixed upon a body laid out on a bare stainless steel table at the center of the room. "Dean," he gasped and lurched forward. His brother looked dead, nothing more than a corpse laid on a mortician's table. It even had little metal wheels and a drainage port near the feet. "Oh god, what did you do," he demanded as he visually searched Dean's body for any signs of trauma. He reached out to feel for himself that his brother was unharmed, that there was still life in his body, but she stopped him.

"Don't," she exclaimed, causing Sam to flinch back on instinct.

Sam's hand obediently fell away, just short of connecting with skin. He was afraid he'd be too late. Now that fear choked him. Dean looked deathly still. It wasn't until Sam noticed the shallow rise and fall of that pale freckled chest that he was able to let go. Sam's eyes watered. "Dean," he repeated. He waited for those green eyes to open, for Dean's throat to start working. He waited for something, anything to indicate that his brother was still in there somewhere, but Dean's features remained slack. There was nobody home.

"A lot of work had been done on him. He's in a coma. It was necessary. It was the only way to keep him from incurring further damage while I removed the external influences on his mind," the girl offered. "He is an anomaly. They did their worst, but somehow, he was always able to break down their reprogramming. But, unlike the rest of us, he does not suffer the enzyme deficiencies inherent in the line. I think that was the only reason Renfro was reluctant to decommission him."

Sam was reeling from what she'd told him. While they'd been planning this rescue, he had expected to find Dean as cocky and hotheaded as ever.

She walked a little closer. "The problem is that he's not in a good place right now. You are very prominent in his mind. Most of the memories I have restored involve you in some way. If you weren't there in the moment, you were there with him in his thoughts. I must admit I was eager to bring you here. I sent those guards after you. You the one person that can get through to him if he wakes up feral," she explained, trying to make him understand the reason for her actions.

Sam turned his attention back to the prone figure on the metal slab. Max had told him how dangerous transgenics could be, even at this young age. "Is it that bad?"

"There is prior trauma. Several lifetimes of it, in fact. When I left him to find you he was frenzied, lost in a vast and endless forest in his mind," she told him.

He breathed the word that came to the tip of his tongue, barely giving it voice, "Purgatory." He steeled himself for the worst and ordered, "Do it. Wake him up. I can handle him."

She nodded, taking him at his word. As soon as her fingertips touched Dean's temples he exploded off of the table with a snarl that was more animal than man. Sam resisted the urge to cover his eyes when he noticed that his brother wasn't wearing one stitch of clothing. Dean seemed unaware of his nudity or maybe he didn't care. Whichever one it was didn't truly matter, Sam would be left wrangling the man either way and Dean could be damn slippery without clothing to get a good hold on. He hoped it didn't get that bad. He really hoped he could just talk to Dean, break through to him with just the cadence of his voice.

"Dean," he tried softly. He inched forward carefully.

Dean turned his murderous glare away from the girl and fixated on Sam. There was no recognition that he could tell. It was unnerving, to say the least. With every step Sam took towards him, Dean's muscles tensed until Sam was too close and Dean began inching backward to maintain the distance between them.

Sam stilled and held his hands up, palms out. "Your name is Dean. I'm Sam, Sammy. Do you remember me?" He felt really stupid talking like Dean was a six foot two clueless toddler, but he didn't know what else might work. Just going right in and grabbing him wasn't the right approach. They'd both end up worse off.

Dean cocked his head, like he was listening to something far off. He looked hurt, a little afraid, and so damned confused. Not even his trademark smirk would have covered this. Sam didn't know it but his brother was watching a group of baku walk by and it confused him even further when one passed right through Sam's image. At first, Dean had believed that he'd just been ejected from Purgatory, the filth of the place still clinging to his pores. It would have made sense, except for the fact that he clearly remembered meeting up with his brother at that cabin and there were years of memory he was beginning to piece together afterward. Bits of his life were slotting into place, like a well-traveled road assembling itself for every step he took upon it. Dean blinked and the baku winked out. He could do this. The year was… um, it must be 2018, no 2019. 2019, he was sure of it. He looked up into the worried hazel eyes a few feet away. Stone number one. He wasn't in Purgatory, hadn't been for years. This was Sam, real Sam in front of him. “Uh, Sammy, you'd tell me if an elephant-pig was planning to eat my dreams, right? I mean, if you're really you,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his head.

Sam slowly inched closer until he was only a few feet away from his brother. He could almost reach out and touch him, and his heart ached at what he saw in Dean's eyes. “Uh, yeah, Dean,” he replied, a little puzzled. Then, like magic, Sam watched the personality flow back into his brother. Whatever had happened in that thick head of his had brought the cocky son of a bitch back to the forefront. "You back with me, jerk," Sam asked with a grin, greatly relieved.

"Bitch," his brother muttered, taking comfort in the old brotherly banter. He couldn't believe the oversized nerd was actually here. Then he realized that there was an excessive draft on his manly bits, down below. Uh oh. He looked down and noticed with horror his state of undress. He cupped his hands in front of his crotch and blushed furiously. "You gonna find me some clothes or do you need to take a picture first," he asked playfully, trying to cover how mortified he was feeling. “And who’s the girl,” he added, his gaze was calculating when he looked over at the other side of the room where she was standing.

Sam laughed, an all out boisterous belly shaking laugh. He laughed because it was expected and because the fact that Dean was valiantly trying to be the man that Sam remembered was a good sign.

"Shut up," Dean grumbled and stomped over to the table. He wrapped the thin white sheet around his hips with a scowl, like he was challenging Sam to say something stupid. “The girl?”

“She, uh, she helped me get to you,” he said, looking back at her. “You really don’t remember her?”

Dean’s eyes flicked up to the ceiling as his hand reached out, seeking purchase. He flinched hard when he encountered Sam’s hand instead of the rough bark of a tree that he had been expecting. He threw himself backward so hard that the slap of his body against the concrete floor echoed in the room. He was looking from side to side and then frantically up into the ceiling from his seated position on the floor. “Uh, Sam, what's happening to me,” he asked in a small voice, trembling.

Sam looked over to the girl, panicked, and she explained, "He hasn't had a chance to sort through everything I was able to give back to him. I was too rushed. There might be some residual mixing of memory and reality until his mind has settled."

Dean's eye snapped to where she was standing. Even though his gaze kept darting around the room, his voice was even when he demanded, “Who the hell are you?” His jaw was set with determination as he got his legs under himself and stood. His hands were shaking when he finally straightened enough to secure the sheet it in a drape around his muscular frame, much like a toga, but he managed it.

The girl rolled her eyes, relaxing a little. She'd been wound tight before. “You know, if you hadn't wiggled so much,” she began.

Dean's face brightened and he smiled. “Blue girl,” he exclaimed.

"Whatever you say," she drawled. "Just take it easy, would you. I wasn't able to finish," she advised and then she tossed a pile of cloth at Dean, hitting him square in the chest. "And put those on," she ordered.

Sam looked from one to the other a little lost. The conversation had made absolutely no sense, but he figured it had something to do with what had happened while Dean was out. Sam averted his eyes to give his brother a measure of privacy while he changed. He was itching to ask for an explanation, but he finally settled on asking the girl, "What's your name," instead. His gaze inevitably landed on the now empty table and he stepped closer, close enough that the fabric of his jeans brushed against the cold steel. His fingers hovered over its smooth surface. How long had Dean lain here in the cold waiting for him?

She didn't answer right away. Not until Dean clarified the question for her. "Level of training and designation," he gruffly offered. Manticore kids didn't get names. They didn't get birthdays. Not even Dean knew the exact date of his birth. Age was measured instead by the number of yearly evaluations survived, or the level of training that had been achieved. It wasn't an exact science, but it was the best they had.

The girl answered quickly enough once she understood what Sam had been asking. "Adjustment. First year active duty," she replied, "Designation 094753."

Sam was beginning to wish he hadn't asked. That had sounded more like a part description than the story of a little girl and he was woefully ill-equipped to translate it. She might as well have been speaking Borg on a subspace frequency. "Uh."

Dean was fiddling with the buttons on the shirt she had given him, his fingers uncharacteristically clumsy. He mentally did the math, roughly guessing how many years she'd lived under Manticore control. Active duty for psyops personnel was begun much earlier than for the X series field troops. "She's about eleven years old, Sammy. 09 means she's from the ninth line of psyops prototypes," he explained, huffing when he fumbled the second to last button yet again and finally left them both undone. "Adjustment division specializes in memory alteration," he added as an afterthought. As far as he knew, every 094 he'd met were adjustment division. All three of them. The girl nodded in agreement. "And before you ask, I don't know how her thing works. I just know that every time I've seen it done, touch was a factor," he added with a shrug.

The girl, cause he loathed the idea that he would ever use a string of numbers to refer to a living breathing human being, tapped her toe emphatically. "You ready to move, soldier? Your cavalry is about to come through that door," she announced.

"You don't have a name," Sam blurted, still stuck on the idea.

She glared at him and asserted proudly, "I am P4-094753." When she looked over at Dean and found him just staring at his feet instead of putting the shoes on them she frowned, "042."

Dean didn't even twitch when the doors opened and a pair of X5's slipped through. He didn't react at all, not even when Max pointed her gun straight at the girl that had been helping them and threatened to kill her if she moved.

Sam was torn between trying to figure out what had suddenly gone wrong with his brother and keeping Max from shooting a friendly. He didn't want to see anything bad happen to her, especially not after she'd given Dean back to him. "Do you mind if I call you Mercy," he inquired.

Zack stopped near the door, taking it all in. He watched Sam started to edge his way between Max's gun and the transgenic they'd found with him.

"I mean, you helped me. I want to return the favor," he explained, hoping Max would take the hint.

In the corner of his eye he could see Mercy looked up at him like he had just given her the world, and maybe in a way he had. "I would like that," she replied. "042 had a few less flattering names for me at times, but his heart is in the right place," she added with a smile in his brother's direction. It sounded to Sam like there was quite a story behind that last comment. One day he wanted to hear all about it.

Dean suddenly collapsed to the ground with a groan and started seizing.

Sam rushed to his side, trying hard not to panic, just as Zack walked up to Max. He whispered something in her ear, his eyes darting from the girl to Dean and back again. Finally after several long minutes, she lowered her gun and seemed to even relax a little. Sam hadn't heard what was said and he didn't care. Dean was his only concern. He hauled his brother into his lap. Instinctively, he began running his hands gently over Dean's upper torso, wondering if he had missed a physical injury, but there was no blood, nothing obvious and they were running out of time. "Zack," he called, looking over at him, "Help me get him up? We need to get moving." He needed to get Dean out of here. Something was very wrong.

It was Mercy who moved first, and Max's gun hand snapped up, leveling center mass on the girl the moment she started moving. The threat brought her up short, but it didn't stop her from explaining. "I need to stabilize X1-042 before you move him," she said.

Zack knelt on the concrete. His two fingers checked Dean's pulse. He looked stable--breathing, heart rate, temperature. He looked normal, just not conscious. Zack was all business as he barked out, "Mercy, can you wake him?"

"Yes," the girl replied confidently.

Max looked between the three of them. Her finger eased back from the trigger. "You were expecting us. You called Charlie," she realized.

"Yes," Mercy replied shortly. She didn't explain further. She just eased down to kneel next to the two of them and reached for Dean's hand.

Green eyes fluttered at the brief touch and then popped open, wide awake. "What happened," he asked with a pained groan. “God, everything hurts.”

Mercy smirked, "Welcome back."

Sam added, "You fainted."

"I do not faint," his brother insisted confidently.

"You're right. You didn't faint. You had a seizure," she replied dryly.

"So, did I shit my pants," Dean asked with a smirk. “I heard that can happen.”

"Oh my god, Dean," Sam complained, blushing furiously. "Get off me."

He didn't seem to care that he was using his sasquatch little brother like an easy chair, sprawled loose and comfortable in his arms. He craned his head backward to look up at Sam. "So, am I gonna make it," he asked.

Sam could have dumped his ass on the floor, but he didn't. He just rolled his eyes and huffed in exasperation.

Mercy patted his bicep and handed him Sam's backup gun, slipped from his ankle when he wasn't paying attention. "You're hopeless, but you'll live," she told him. She looked over Dean's shoulder, up at Sam. "The last security check-in was two minutes ago. When there is no response from the guards, the main facility will be suspicious. Standard procedure is to send a four-man team to the main gate if all attempts to contact have failed. Get moving."

Lithe as a cat Dean scrambled up off the floor, Max and Zack immediately flanked him and Sam.

Mercy didn't move from her spot on the floor. She looked resigned.

Sam looked over his shoulder as they moved towards the door. "You aren't coming with us," he asked.

Her eyes widened, like his question made no sense. "I… No," she said.

She scrambled to her feet and stepped out into the hallway ahead of them. She intended to use a radio from one of the dead guards to draw the incoming team away from their escape route, but Dean snatched it from her hand, his eyes hard and determined. "Yes, you are," he told her. Then he put a 9mm from that same guard in her hand instead. It looked big in her hands, but she checked the clip with eerie efficiency. Dean waited until she was done, then he pointed at Sam and told her, "Watch him."

Sam soon discovered why Dean hadn't appointed himself Sam's protector. He was different now.

Mercy covered the rear all the way out of the building. Taking Dean's order earnestly, she was Sam's silent shadow as they made their way back to the car. They had just reached the tree line when gunfire erupted. Bullets skittered off weathered trunks, blowing bits of bark in their faces. Dean had frozen, eyes wide as the rest of the group dropped to the ground. He had to be dragged bodily down into the dirt and only Sam was able to get through to him so that they could then crawl their way further into the woods, using the dense woods for cover. They couldn't see their pursuers, but Max and Zack seemed to have a good idea which direction the shots were being fired from. They peeled off with a, "See to your boy," thrown over Max's shoulder as they sprinted away. A few minutes later the onslaught ended with a crisp pop-pop-pop-pop.

Dean seemed lethargic when Sam was finally bundling him into the backseat of the Prius. He knew it was the seizure that had done it. He'd known someone at Stanford who had epilepsy and she would sleep for hours after a seizure, like a switch had been flipped. She'd jokingly called it her hibernation period. He expected that his brother wouldn't last the entire ride back, asleep before the first checkpoint. Sam could have slid into the front seat next to Logan. The leg room wasn't enough up there, it was even worse in the cramped shelf that was the backseat of the little hybrid car. But he needed to be by his brother. He folded his long body painfully into the backseat. He fought for elbow room and moved around until his legs were spread every which way but where they should be. It was uncomfortable, but he wouldn't have moved from that spot in the back with Dean next to him for anything. He even had one hand settled on the center of Dean's chest, monitoring the steady rise and fall of it. He needed the reassurance that this wasn't all some cruel joke.

"You good back there," Logan asked as he got the car moving. The Prius gently hummed along the road, so quiet that it might as well have been silent.

Sam hummed, nodding his head.

Dean just patted his hand, because he knew Sam needed this.

Sam hummed again.

"Sam."

Sam looked up.

Logan leveled a look at him. "Smile. We won," he remarked and returned Sam's hesitant grin with one of his own.

That wasn't exactly what Sam had been expecting, but he just shrugged as his eyes strayed inevitably over to his brother.

They passed through three checkpoints to get into the heart of the city where the skyscrapers still stood tall and mighty. Each time Logan told them, "Let me do the talking."

Sam had stopped asking a long time ago what had happened to the country that he loved. He still loved it, even though the disease had spread down to the bones and begun rotting the core of her. Moments like these, though, with people penned in by armed guards and razor wire fencing made his heart ache with sadness. He was taking Dean from one kind of cage to another and he wasn't going to do anything about it.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

1994

Sam heard the deep rumble of the Impala cut off and he was at the motel door before the familiar squeak of the car's hinges told him someone was getting out. He wanted to tear it open, to throw the door wide just to see who was on the other side. He waited, though, ear pressed to the flimsy wooden barrier as two sets of boots crossed the gravel between the parking lot and his motel room. One set was stepping heavier, dragging a foot along like the leg attached to it wasn't quite working right, and all Sam could think was that it better be Dad that was limping. If this was Dean fighting to walk he didn't know what he would do, but it wouldn't be good.

He heard the jangle of keys and the crunch-click of the proper one sliding home in the lock. Sam took a step back from the door, settling onto the closest bed like he couldn't care less. Dad had sent Dean alone on a hunt four days ago, and he hadn't told Sam anything about it, not what his brother was hunting nor when to expect him back. It hadn't mattered how much he'd pestered the man, he'd held fast and kept it to himself. It was like he expected Dean to prove his value every year as some sort of twisted birthday tradition.

Sam fiddled with the hem of his shirt, refusing to look up as the lock turned and the door swung open.

The heavy step-drag sounded different over the thin carpeting and he squeezed his eyes shut when it was Dean's Doc Martens that came into view. It was too late, though. He'd already seen how one foot was held gingerly, how it was refusing to bear his brother's weight for any substantial length of time. He hated it. He hated the monsters for hurting his family, his brother for getting injured in the first place, his father for making Dean go out solo on a hunt when he was supposed to be celebrating his fifteenth birthday, but mostly he hated himself for being too weak to back Dean up. If he was stronger, smarter, and faster he might have been allowed to go along to watch his brother's back. If Sam had been there just maybe he wouldn't have gotten injured.

"Sammy," Dean croaked, his voice like ground glass and gravel. He sounded horrible.

He looked up, following the boot barely touching the ground to the slightly bent knee and upward past the hip holding that entire limb practically in mid-air. He let out a sob and launched himself off the bed, pulling the older boy's upper body down to his level.

"Hey, now," Dean murmured, patting his back the way he'd done when they both had been smaller. "You brush your teeth?"

Sam nodded into his chest, clutching him tighter.

John stepped into the room and closed the door none too gently. The window rattled in its frame. "Sammy, why aren't you in bed," the eldest Winchester inquired loudly.

It made Sam startle and burrow deeper like he was trying to crawl inside of Dean and never leave.

When he didn't answer, dad sharply added, "I asked you a question, son." He was standing over by the bathroom now, having turned around midway to getting cleaned up. There wasn't a mark on him and his stance was easy. Whatever had gotten its claws on Dean hadn't touched the man and it made Sam's blood boil. He obviously hadn't been off on a hunt of his own, and he hadn't considered lending a hand to the older boy, even though Dean usually came back banged up half to hell. It had been happening for years now. Dean would leave a couple days before his birthday on a special solo hunt and a week later Sam would nurse his older brother back to health.

"Couldn't sleep, sir," Sam replied sullenly.

What followed was pretty standard. It was a struggle to get Sam into bed and he wouldn't do it until he got a good look at the injuries hiding beneath his brother's clothes. Things came to a head with Sam yelling at the man at the top of his lungs, "He's fifteen! You should have been there to watch his back! Or-or let me! I actually give a damn!"

Dean tried to calm him. "Sam," he said , as he settled his hand softly between his shoulder blades. They could both tell that dad was about two seconds from knocking the sass out of the younger boy, fists clenching rhythmically.

Sam gave dad one last glare, heedless of how close he had come to incurring their father's wrath, before he turned around and herded his brother over to the bed, badgering him until he sat down. Sam carefully helped Dean carefully remove his shirt. Dean rolled his eyes, his fond exasperation evident. "Geez, Dean, did you even try to defend yourself," Sam complained as he took in the mottled bruising on his brother's torso. He put down the alcohol, though. There wasn't one inch of split skin anywhere that he could see.

He shrugged. "Gotta make it fair, little brother. S'no fun otherwise," he joked with a saucy grin as the younger boy checked him over.

"Stop that," Sam snapped, pushing Dean back down on the bed when he tried to stand. "It's not a joke. You don't get to do that," he added. "Don't die on me. Not ever!" His fingers dug in along Dean's ribs with his words, the force of his demand bleeding into his movements accidentally.

Dean winced but endured the attention until the younger boy was certain his wounds weren't more serious than they looked. "I'm Batman, remember," he said, trying to break the tension between them. Sam just glowered down at his purple skin. "I'll always come back for you, little brother. Even when you grow up and don't want me to," Dean added reassuringly.

Sam sighed then slapped his brother's leg for emphasis. "You better."

The next morning found Dean whistling jauntily as he flipped pancakes at the little electric griddle he'd found in the dumpster last week. His tattered jeans were hanging low on his hips, showing off a rather impressive set of finger bruises along one hip bone. Now that Sam was seeing him in the brighter lighting it looked like his brother had been soundly beaten by something humanoid. Sam studied the guarded way Dean was holding himself, mentally adding the map of bruises he had already seen on Dean's skin.

"Dean, you'd tell me if something else was going on, right," he asked.

He watched as the muscles in Dean's back bunched up into one tense line. It was a moment until he nodded. "Yeah, Sammy," he replied.

Sam almost believed him as the pile of finished pancakes grew taller. Almost.


	8. Part Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You done or do we need to start braiding each others' hair," Dean asked flippantly, though there was a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. They were going to be ok. Dean was back to teasing him already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics are from Winterborn by The Cruxshadows.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2019

Dean shouldered Max aside, her long hair like silk brushing against his arm. "Hey, no hogging all the coffee," he complained and commandeered the carafe, along with the rest of the liquid black gold swirling inside of it. He moaned loudly when the hot brew hit his tongue, "Oh god, thought I'd never get to taste this again." He looked a little goofy drinking straight from the big glass carafe, head tipped back and mouth wide open.

Sam wrinkled his nose in annoyance. "You say that every morning, Dean," he remarked, but there was no heat in his words. Sam had reacted pretty much the same way the first time he'd gotten his hands on a mug made from the sack of arabica beans in Logan's pantry.

His brother winked at him and drained the carafe down to the very last drop. He even shook it and tapped the bottom just to be sure. "They didn't want to give the prototype a caffeine high," he explained after he was sure he'd gotten every last drop. Then he grimaced and added, "Something about messing with the results." Sam would have assumed he was joking if it weren't for the tightness around his eyes, and the haunted look in those green depths.

Dean's seizure at the facility had been the first Sam had witnessed, but it certainly had not been the last. The road to recovery had been a difficult one, but he'd stood resolutely by his brother's side the ever since the rescue. The grand mal, fall to the floor, convulsions had grown less frequent and were gradually replaced by these periods of time where Dean just froze in place, his mouth working like he was chewing on a juicy piece of pie. Thankfully, he claimed that he didn't remember these episodes after they happened and Sam had eventually stopped asking him about it. The last had been two days ago, Dean's arm had frozen with his beer bottle inches from his mouth. Several minutes later, his brother had finally blinked and started moving again while the rest of them tried to act normal, like they weren't intently watching his every move.

_Dry your eyes and quietly bear this pain with pride_   
_For heaven shall remember the silent and the brave_   
_And promise me they will never see, the fear within our eyes_

Max wandered out of the kitchen as Dean set up another pot of coffee. Though the brothers had been staying with Logan, she had her own squat in the city and a full-time job as a bike messenger. It was getting late and she needed to return home. "Hey, Dean," she called out before she climbed out the window, "You, me, a bunch of Russians, and a deck of cards. This Friday?"

"Da, klevyy. Davay otorvemsja," Dean agreed with enthusiasm.

Max wrinkled her nose. "Your Russian is terrible, Winchester," she told him and then disappeared outside.

Dean pouted, feigning hurt, but Sam was the only other person in the room and he didn't look convinced. "My Russian is awesome," he announced. "Just like my Latin. Right, Sam?"

Sam snorted, "Sure, Dean."

The coffee pot finished burbling, but Dean was too busy blustering about his language skills to notice. Mercy swooping in for the kill, snagging the coffee carafe before Dean could get to it. "Coffee thief," Dean accused playfully as she ambled out of the kitchen with a fresh horn of the brew dangling around her neck. The drinking horn had been a gift from Dean, a spill proof coffee cup she could sling over her shoulder.

Things had been good for a while after the rescue, until they weren't again. Mercy had gotten very sick only days afterward, her genetic code breaking down in a way no one had ever seen before. She aged in fast forward and in a matter of a few days she needed a pair of canes just to keep her upright. Mercy had an amazing attitude about the whole thing. Apparently, she viewed Dean as her one good accomplishment in life. The man had actually blushed, stammering out something about plenty of time left. It had been adorable, especially after Charlie figured out that regular infusions of Dean's serum into Mercy's bloodstream appeared to prevent further deterioration of her condition. At that point, the pair of them had fawned over the older brother just to watch him turn bright red until he'd chased them off with empty threats and bluster.

"Nah, she was just the decoy," Charlie crowed as she made off with the rest of the pot.

"Son of a bitch!"

Charlie peeked around the corner with a smirk. "Check the counter," she sang before returning to what he'd dubbed the geek cave, which was in actuality just the area where Logan had set up his computer.

Dean perked up when he saw the steaming cup of coffee waiting for him. "Thanks," he grumbled, but he actually allowed a little smile when he thought no one was watching.

Sam's phone dinged. The message was a gentle reminder from Charlie. She'd been trying to get the two of them to talk about what had happened five years ago. The thought of bringing up the subject made him uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and looking down at the newspaper like it could somehow absolve him. Charlie was right. They hadn't talked, not really. There was the tearful reunion neither man would admit to and Sam hadn't let his brother out of his sight that night or the day after. Dean had needed time to heal as well. In the meantime, Sam had gathered his courage. Now he just had to use it.

"Hey Dean," he said and cleared his throat.

"Yeah," Dean hummed distractedly.

"You know I regretted it almost as soon as it came out my mouth, right," he asked. He didn't need to explain further. They were both acutely aware of the unspoken questions left hanging between them.

_Hold your head up high-for there is no greater love_   
_Think of the faces of the people you defend_   
_(you defend)_   
_And promise me, they will never see the tears within our eyes_   
_(my eyes are closed)_   
_Although we are men, with mortal sins, angels never cry_

Dean shook his head. "Sam, save it," he insisted. "I was coming back. We would have been fine. But, you were so sick and Manticore was on my ass. When they threatened you while you were so weak. I couldn't," he swallowed and looked away, tamping down the memories. "They weren't allowed to touch you. Not because of me. That's why I stayed away. What you said, it hurt. It carved a hole right into me, but I knew I deserved it and I knew you didn't mean it, not really," he said, giving Sam a stern glare when the kid opened his mouth to argue, or blame himself, or say something else monumentally stupid and completely untrue. He told him, "You are not to blame for the last five years, and neither am I."

Sam knew Dean didn't really mean that last one. He was sure Dean felt responsible, for everything, He also knew there wasn't much anyone could do to persuade him otherwise.

Sam nodded, pondering.

"Besides, you found me. Saved my ass just in time," he added with a grin.

Sam could see a fifteen-year-old Dean, in ripped jeans and a too small thermal jacket sporting a chip on his shoulder a mile wide, in the man before him. Back then just about everyone but Sam, and maybe John, had been pathologically terrified of his big brother. But, never Sam. That deep scowl and pugnacious posturing had melted away the moment it was just the two of them. Deep inside that tough exterior there was a warm gooey center. Dean was a carer at heart. He didn't think about what his decisions might do to himself, only what they could do for the people he cared about, the people he wanted to protect. And, yes, he often added names to that list much quicker than the younger brother would have liked. Sam had often been accused of being the emotional brother. It wasn't entirely true. He was just willing to talk about it. Dean had once told him that he had a philosopher's soul, one of the rare glimpses into the man his brother could have been if their lives had been different.

"You done or do we need to start braiding each others' hair," Dean asked flippantly, though there was a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. They were going to be ok. Dean was back to teasing him already.

_So bury fear, for fate draws near_   
_And hide the signs of pain_   
_With noble acts, the bravest souls_   
_Endure the heart's remains_   
_Discard regret, that in this debt_   
_A better world is made_

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

2020

They never went back for the papers that Dean had tried to smuggle out of Manticore. In the end, it didn't really matter. He was Sam's brother and that was all that was truly important to the two of them. Anything else would have been just a mere exercise in curiosity. Besides, Sam wasn't about to let the man walk back into Manticore without him and Dean refused to let his giant of a baby brother within a hundred miles of the place. They were at a standstill. Thankfully, Charlie seemed content with what they already had and Max had been steadily adding her own recollections to the dataset. They didn't stay with Logan either. The brothers Winchester quickly discovered that they craved a home of their own. After the bunker, it was much harder to get back to the nomadic lifestyle they known all their lives. Dean kept complaining about needing a proper kitchen to make his awesome burgers and Sam had been wanting to put down roots somewhere for as long as he had understood the meaning.

Sam found this dilapidated old house a few miles away in another sector of Seattle. Its bones were just about the only part of it that didn't need a lot of work. It was perfect. They had started fixing up the place as soon as they had the deed in hand. The first things to go were the moth-eaten curtains and every other bit of cloth or carpet that had been left behind by the previous occupants.

"I don't see why we have to get new curtains," Dean complained as Sam clamped a paw on his shoulder and started herding him down the relevant aisles.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Because, Dean, the old ones were so full of holes they ripped themselves off the rod," he pointed out. They had. What was left of the cloth holding the curtain to the rod had completely lost integrity when he'd opened them to get a look outside the other day.

"I know that," he griped. He reached out and rubbed at a piece of crushed red velvet between his fingers. "I'm just asking why I'm here. You're the Suzy homemaker, Samantha," he pointed out.

Nope, red was out. "I am not doing it all by myself," he growled and shoved his brother forward another step, further away from the bawdy colors and closer to the blues and greens he was using to decorate their new home. He finally yanked the red out of Dean's hands and tossed it behind them. "Focus," he demanded. Dean was like a squirrel on crack sometimes.

Dean huffed. "That one looks good," he said and gestured to the first thing he saw. He winced when he realized that it was decidedly beachy in appearance with little shells and palm trees along one thick strip. Even he knew that wouldn't work with the Kansas country theme Sam seemed to be cultivating. There were little leaves frickin' hidden all over the bathrooms since Sam had gone and repainted them without consulting Dean. "Just pick something," he got out before he tried to make a break for the exit and the vinyl record store next door.

Keeping Dean actually in the home goods aisle was beginning to look more and more like trying to herd a tricked out cat. At this point, Sam's strategy for success was all about eliminating his brother's options. He got a little enthusiastic, though. He nearly clotheslined his brother trying to close off the man's escape route.

Dean looked up at those sad Sam-puppy eyes, gagging and his throat raw from the impact with the kid's meaty forearm. He really wanted to be mad, but his resolve crumbled. Shit. He knew he was being an asshole. Sam had been adorably excited about decorating their new home from top to bottom. All he'd wanted was a little support today. Dean bit his lip to keep it from wobbling and surveyed the bits of fabric nearby. He could do this. He really didn't want this to devolve into a fight, and Sam wasn't going to give this up until he got what he wanted anyways. Stubborn as a mule didn't even begin to describe the Winchester brand of stubborn and Sam had inherited it in spades. Dean touched a few things, noticing the faces his brother made for each one. The funniest one was this sour lemon look when Dean accidentally on purpose strayed too far into the cartoonish crap. Okay. Not any of those. Got it. Eventually, he grabbed a plain muslin and bamboo roman shade. "What about this one," he asked, holding it up.

Sam looked pleasantly surprised and Dean's eyebrows nearly crawled into his hairline when his brother grabbed enough to fit every window on the first floor then headed for the checkout counter.

Huh.

_And in this moment..I will not run_   
_It is my place to stand_   
_We few shall carry hope_   
_Within our bloodied hands_

Sam's birthday wasn't anything particularly special. At first, he didn't even realize what day it was. He'd woken up a full four hours late, the sun already shining high over Seattle. He did notice that Dean was conspicuously absent. Normally, his brother would be leaning up against the counter, slamming his fourth or fifth cup of the day as the machine burbled away on a second pot, but the kitchen was empty and the coffee in big glass carafe was already room temperature.

He poured himself a tall glass with plenty of ice and cream and went looking for his wayward sibling. He wasn't worried. In the last few months, things had largely stabilized. They had worked with Max on a few cases in the city and Logan on his little crusade. Sam could sympathize with his fervor, maybe even reciprocate. Sam and Dean had been helping people all of their lives and the things they'd done with Logan definitely fell under the good deeds category. It was nice to sometimes be able to intervene before the bodies started dropping.

The house was deserted too. Dean's bed was neatly made and the only thing keeping Sam's knee-jerk trepidation at bay was the sight of Baby tucked away safe in the garage, her engine block cold and quiet. With the two of them here and Dean elsewhere, he knew his brother was planning on coming back. He'd promised. He'd looked Sam in the eye as he told him, "I'll always come back for you. Last time I surrendered. I walked right through those gates and hit the dirt on my knees. That's not going to happen again." Sam had believed him.

What Sam didn't expect was that his brother would test the bounds of his patience so goddamn thoroughly. By noon he was fidgeting, unable to concentrate on the ledger beneath his hands. Logan had needed him to look at the books from some bookie, a crooked CPA with robotically perfect handwriting. The ink was beginning to blur on the page the longer he looked at it. Numbers weren't strictly his thing, but he could manage it. He just didn't enjoy it as much as he had relished pouring over the seemingly endless legal texts at Stanford. He rubbed at his eyes, considered for the thousandth time that he should probably just buy a pair of reading glasses already, and looked over at the little analog clock over the fireplace.

With a huff he leaned out and snagged his cell phone from the counter, dialing his brother's number. It didn't even ring once, shunting to voicemail immediately, "This is Dean's other phone. Leave a message."

"Dean, where are you? Give me a call," he recorded and hung up. The chances of that voicemail being heard before Dean crossed the threshold were somewhere around nil, but it felt good to leave the message anyway.

He still wasn't angry. A little annoyed, yes, but he wasn't going to get angry. He'd wasted enough of his life pissed off and looking for revenge. He didn't need to add more time to the list. Well, he wasn't angry until he saw the date on his phone's display, little black digits in the upper right corner telling him that the day was May second. May fucking second was half over and Dean was gone, again. He swore, standing up so quickly that the chair toppled back and hit the floor with a loud crack.

He had a full hour to stew in the worry and rage coursing through him before his brother stumbled through the door. "Sammy," Dean drunkenly exclaimed as Max's petite frame sped away on her motorbike. His lip was busted, there was fresh blood dripping from both sides of his nose, he had enough fresh bruising to suggest one hell of a fight, and he seemed to be more than just a little off balance.

Sam scowled, "You're drunk."

Dean nearly face-planted on the tile when Sam didn't catch him, but he recovered gracelessly, teetering on his legs like they were made of cooked spaghetti. "Captain Obvious," he accused.

"Need help getting to bed," he wondered.

"No," he replied and fell backward onto their couch heavily, skull bouncing off the wall with a sickening thud. Geez, if Dean wasn't careful Sam would be treating a concussion in addition to the wicked hangover they both knew was coming for him. He started digging around in his pants pocket, nearly dragging the denim down off his hips before he pulled something small from their depths with a sound of triumph.

Sam ignored his antics.

"Sammy, catch," Dean yelled before launching something small, hard, and pointy at Sam's head. In his defense, he'd been aiming for his little brother's chest. It was just difficult to aim at a specific Sam when he could figure out which one of the three he was seeing was the real deal.

The leather cord got caught in his mouth and a sharp edge on the small bronze thing hit him square in the temple. "Dean," he yelled, anger and annoyance finally bursting into his voice. "What the hell!"

He had the good sense to look a little sheepish when he realized what he'd done, but then a big shit-eating grin spread across his face unashamedly. "Happy birthday, Sammy-boy," he announced.

He felt his bruised temple gently, checking for blood or something even worse. "So, my present is a concussion? Thanks," Sam replied sarcastically.

Dean grimaced, the alcohol swimming in his veins virtually eliminating his ability to put up a stoic front. "No, man. Check it," he suggested and pointed vaguely in Sam's direction. "I got you a present."

Sam was going to blow it off and throw Dean in bed, but his brother's face was so open and hopeful that he couldn't deny him. The little metal figurine was digging pointed edges into the palm of his hand. He knew what he wanted it to be. He wanted it to be Dean's amulet, that butt-ugly uber-protection figurine Dean had tossed in the trash after Heaven. The shape felt close enough that he figured Dean had found a replacement for the childhood gift.

"C'mon," Dean urged excitedly.

Sam was fucking psychic. Ok, he really was psychic, or had been. He was still a little fuzzy on how that worked. But, when he opened his hand to reveal the figurine that had left a dent in his temple, he found he was looking down on Dean's amulet nestled in his hand. It was not a forgery or some other sort of reproduction. It was perfect. Sam vision blurred as his fingers went boneless and the amulet tumbled to the floor. He couldn't catch his breath.

Dean scrambled off the couch and hurried over to where Sam seemed to be having some sort of attack. His hands fluttered over Sam's chest and checked his pulse, strong and steady.

Sam's hands pawed at him, looking for something.

Dean scooped the necklace off the tile, brushed it off just in case, and pressed its familiar shape into his brother's palm.

Sam calmed immediately, looking down at it in wonder. "How," he asked.

"Doesn't matter," he said.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)


	9. Deleted Scenes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unpolished scenes that were cut from the story for various reasons, but are still valid and fit into the plotline.

[ ](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/428742.html)

 

Author's Note: Occurs during Part Seven in the kitchen.

2019

“Half. I'm your half-brother. Near as I can tell, Sandeman didn't have the cloning process down right until after the first batch of X-1's.”

 

* * *

 

Author's Note: Max and Logan discussed where they were during the Pulse in Dark Angel, S01E03 Flushed.

What were you doing when the Pulse hit?

Sam had lost count of how many times he had been asked that question. He'd given a lot of answers, but never the truth. The Pulse changed everything. It leveled hundreds of miles and rendered useless just about every piece of electronic equipment on the continent. How do you even begin to tell someone that you singlehandedly began the end of the world, that you alone are responsible for the pain and suffering of millions of people, for an entire country? Sam didn't know. Sam was at ground zero, St Mary's Convent, at the beginning of the end of the world and he was sure that most of the people that knew that were now dead. Lucifer had done a thorough job of cleaning out the old guard of the hunter ranks, including just about anyone that had even heard of Sam Winchester. There were still days that he wished Dean had left him dead at Cold Oak. He wasn't worth all this.

 

* * *

 

Author’s Note: directly following 042's confrontation with 494 in Part Two

2019

He didn't protest when a beefy looking male nurse in green scrubs came to get him when it was time. 042 followed because he had to. The desk jockeys were close to trusting him and he really didn't want to spend the rest of his life in this hole, missing the freedom of the open road. He'd had enough of that for several lifetimes. Two square meals a day in a four by seven cell and not one little shaft of sunshine, ever. No wonder the anomalies were almost universally whacked out of their gourds. What the hell did they expect? An amoeba would lose their shit living like that.

As he rounded the corner and stepped into his designated testing room for the day, 042 wondered what would be in store for him. He'd heard Phase 2 was usually unpleasant, but that didn't mean he had any idea what to expect. Alistair could have learned a thing or two from these bozos. He liked the treadmill, though. He could run for hours, actually had. Fourteen of them, doped to the gills with extra energy to burn. He'd stepped off the belt too shaky to stand and blowing like a racehorse, but the endorphins had kept him floating all day. That wouldn't be so bad.

"Up here," the man ordered, patting a large gurney completed with reinforced restraints.

042 didn't bother mentioning his dislike of the ECT machine, which was already prepped and waiting. So, it was going to be like that. There was no use avoiding it.

The tech strapped him down and hooked him up, stuck a few more needles into him like he didn't have enough holes punched into him already. Someone in this place had a sick medical fetish. He was always getting fucking tied down and examined. It was goddamned annoying. His head was wrestled into position, fingers clenching on thin air, as the man added a wide strap over his forehead and pulled it taut. The one thing 042 didn't fight was the rubber mouth guard. He was kinda partial to his teeth and once the volts started flowing he didn't exactly have control of himself.

Hours later he was limp, exhausted. 042's brain felt like scrambled jello and every inch of his body ached. He didn't remember much of what went down. Probably never would. He remembered reading somewhere that memory loss was commonplace in victims of electrocution. To think, people used to volunteer for that shit. Well, fuck that. He clutched the water bottle his handler had chucked at him like it was sweet ambrosia and tried to remember why he was here as he collapsed on the small cot in his cell. He couldn't let himself forget again. Even if he forgot everything else. Even if he forgot himself.

042 must have drifted off at some point because the next thing he knew there was a loud banging on his door and sunlight streaming through the tiny window near the ceiling. Morning. It was morning. It had to be. That window was facing east and he could almost see the bright burning ball just above the treeline.

The banging rattled the door one more time and was followed by a gruff, "Get up 042, we're taking you for a test drive."

 

* * *

 

Author’s Note: Dean POV while he was missing in Part Five

November 4th, 1991

The drugs were wearing off too slowly, leaving Dean in that halfway place between wakefulness and black oblivion. There was a voice speaking from very far off and the sound echoed, as if on the other end of a long pipe.

"You sure this is the one?"

Dean concentrated, trying to move. Wiggle your big toe.

"Wouldn't have brought it here if I wasn't. The Colonel wants a catch and release. You have two days. No visible marks."

"Two days? I can barely get anything done in that amount of time!"

He could feel himself moving due to the vibration of the wheels attached to whatever he was laying on. A gurney maybe? He tried desperately to order his eyes to open. He needed to know if they'd gotten Sammy too. Dad would be so disappointed in him. He was so weak. He couldn't even fight off a little tranquilizer.

He must have twitched because someone near his feet said, "He's coming around. Get the restraints."

"Doc's going to want to see this. His X2's can barely handle a little valium. What did we give it? Double?"

Disembodied hands grabbed at him, arranged him on the hard surface. He could feel them just barely through the thick cotton deadness of his body. Wiggle your big toe.

"We need more time."

Something cold pushed into his veins, climbing up his arm. Oh god, it hurt. Ice searing through him. He wanted to scream.

"4 November 1991, 1835 hours. Examination of recovered X1-042…"

He didn't hear the rest of it and later he wished he hadn't woken up for any of it.

 

* * *

 

Author’s Note: Part Seven, in the kitchen

2019

"Charlie says you want to stick around," Dean said after a long moment of silence. He fiddled with his coffee cup without drinking it and his very being seemed to be waiting for Sam's answer. "If you do, that would be fine," he added awkwardly.

"Yes, I do," he answered honestly, hoping it was the answer Dean was looking for, refusing to believe Dean meant to do anything other than stay with him.

"Good, that's… good," Dean grunted and the tension bled from his body. He settled into the chair opposite Sam looking relieved and happy. He snagged the financial section of the newspaper and began to read.

Sam waited.

"I told Zack that I stole my file and some other stuff on X1's and X5's," he added after a moment.

Sam hummed in acknowledgement. Dean had mentioned it to him before.

"The files you and Charlie found, Sam… They started after I left Manticore the first time. The nerds are having a field day with it, but I found my original records. Notes on my cocktail, the day I was born. I had it in my hands, Sammy, and I had to leave it behind," Dean added and waited. The room was silent except for the sounds of turning pages and Logan, Charlie, and Mercy gabbing with each other over nerd stuff in the geek cave. "I want to go in after it," he finally admitted. “Will you help me?”

It was like a bomb had gone off. Sam was questioning the accuracy of his own ears.

His shock must have shown on his face because his brother frowned. "Don't get your panties in a twist, Samantha," he said.

"Don't get," Sam sputtered. "What the hell, Dean! I am not losing you for another five years. If you even come back at all. I thought we were good." He was pissed. Sam had just, just managed to save the man from the jaws of Manticore death and Dean wanted to walk right back in? No way. No how. He'd chain his brother to the radiator before he let that happen.

"We are good, Sammy," Dean hastened to inform him and the sound of his nickname in that whiskey rough voice was reassuring. "And I will come back. Last time I surrendered. I walked right through those gates and hit the dirt on my knees. That's not going to happen again. I've even got two kickass X5's to watch my ass," he reminded Sam.

His words made Sam look down at the tabletop in shame. He knew they were meant to sooth his worries, but they failed to ease the pit in Sam's stomach carving ulcers into the sensitive lining.

Dean was suddenly up in his space, pushing his chair back and kneeling on the tile between his legs. Green eyes were looking up through the curtain of his bangs at him in concern.

Sam tried to stifle the tears threatening to fall, but gravity was working against him and there was nowhere he could hide.

Dean reared up and pulled Sam's face into the crook of his neck, like he'd done when they were just two boys trying to survive in the long stretches between John's infrequent visits. "Hey, hey. None of that," he murmured, almost too low to distinguish.

Sam wrapped him in a brief hug that tried to be manly despite their respective positions, snuffling into his skin before pulling away. By the time Dean let him go he'd gotten control of himself again, looking miserable but dry-eyed.

Dean caught his gaze. "I meant what I said, Sam. I'll always come back for you. Do you believe me?"

Sam's lip wobbled but he nodded. "Yes," he admitted. This was his Dean kneeling there, tossing aside all pretexts in an effort to ease the younger brother's concern. "But, I'm going with you."

Eventually Dean caved and let him. Little brothers win every time, and it didn’t hurt to have epic puppy dog eyes of doom, either.

 

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